The Gene
An Intimate History
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The Gene
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Narrated by:
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Dennis Boutsikaris
About this listen
The Gene is the story of one of the most powerful and dangerous ideas in our history, from best-selling, prize-winning author Siddhartha Mukherjee.
Spanning the globe and several centuries, The Gene is the story of the quest to decipher the master code that makes and defines humans, that governs our form and function.
The story of the gene begins in an obscure Augustinian abbey in Moravia in 1856, where a monk stumbles on the idea of a 'unit of heredity'. It intersects with Darwin's theory of evolution and collides with the horrors of Nazi eugenics in the 1940s. The gene transforms postwar biology. It reorganises our understanding of sexuality, temperament, choice and freewill. This is a story driven by human ingenuity and obsessive minds - from Charles Darwin and Gregor Mendel to Francis Crick, James Watson and Rosalind Franklin and the thousands of scientists still working to understand the code of codes.
This is an epic, moving history of a scientific idea coming to life by the author of The Emperor of All Maladies. But woven through The Gene like a red line is also an intimate history - the story of Mukherjee's own family and its recurring pattern of mental illness, reminding us that genetics is vitally relevant to everyday lives. These concerns reverberate even more urgently today as we learn to 'read' and 'write' the human genome - unleashing the potential to change the fates and identities of our children.
Majestic in its ambition and unflinching in its honesty, The Gene gives us a definitive account of the fundamental unit of heredity - and a vision of both humanity's past and its future.
©2016 Siddhartha Mukherjee (P)2016 Random House AudioBooksListeners also enjoyed...
What listeners say about The Gene
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Overall5 out of 5 stars
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Performance4 out of 5 stars
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- Dr W
- 11-05-21
A great book
A well written and informative book that has many moving moments. The performance was very good and the only negative point was the mispronunciation of some scientific terms, but unless you're a scientist you would'n't know this. This should not detract the listener from appreciating this book.
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Overall5 out of 5 stars
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- Henry Carpenter-Clawson
- 25-01-17
Fascinating read/listen
This was my first audio book and as my headline states I found it to be fascinating. A really good mix of the science, the history and the ethics around genomics. I am definitely a layman.
My wife is doing a masters in Genomics and listened to a lot of this with me. She said the science was exactly what she had been studying in her first module and that she too found the history really interesting.
Genomics is a big thing in medicine right now and this book will help you understand why and what it might mean in the future.
Highly recommended.
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7 people found this helpful
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Overall5 out of 5 stars
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- Tiger
- 05-06-20
Outstanding Author!
Highly recommended book and author. This is the second book I have read from Mukherjee, with the first being The Emperor of All Maladies. The author has a flare for writing these potentially overly clinical topics in a gripping and engaging way, without ever over-simplifying the material to make a reader feel like they are missing the central principles. I find myself thinking up topics I wish he would write about. This book is a good introduction to the topic of genetics that assumes no prior knowledge, only a decent general knowledge. It is structured chronologically, stopping to tour the seminal moments in the subject’s history and pondering the ethical implications of advancements. Not a dull moment for me, with the conclusion provoking enough thought that I will definitely listen to it again in the future. Much lighter in mood than The Emperor of All Maladies, due to the subject matter, and almost as memorable!
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- John McNamara
- 28-02-21
A must read.
loved this book. please do read it. You'll be very happy that you did. Hope you enjoy it.
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- james david adcock
- 22-02-20
fascinating listen
couldn't stop listening once I started, full of amazing information and the narrater a joy to listen to. if you are human, grab this one, 5 star.
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- Alex
- 01-12-21
A must read for everyone
an absolutely riveting story through the history of genetics, mapping from Darwin to recent discoveries in the genetics of gender identity, sexuality and how that's impacted human perception of these things
a must read, and a vital read for biologists and geneticists
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- SH
- 18-06-23
Very good indeed
Well written, well read, funny, insightful, optimistic yet cautionary. Worth the time and expense many times over.
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- Alek
- 06-05-21
An excellent crash course to genes
Well crafted story line, clear and with ample historical information as to bring grounding to the timeline of the gene. Another superb book by Mukherjee. Very well narrated.
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- Reals over Feels
- 07-04-19
Good overall primer for the topic
I enjoyed the overall tone and found the book highly unformative. Perhaps it was a little tautalogical in prose though certainly not in context. I used the hardback edition too for the plates and the notes and found that this would be essential for the chapters where you learn all information to understanding DNA structure, cutting and PCR. Using both the audio and the book recommended for busy readers with many books. Sone of the family history is useful to understand the author so I find this book to be very complete.
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3 people found this helpful
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- lordfofballymote
- 16-06-21
OUTSTANDING
This is a staggering piece of work that completely blew me away. Many thanks Dr Mukherjee I’m buying anything else you have written.
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