Chance in the House of Fate: A Natural History of Heredity [Hardcover]

Whenever picking up a Science book, I always like to know the qualifications of the author. How much of this stuff is the author making up, how much of it is political propaganda? Is this going to be of the kind of "Research" I did for my grad school paper variety or the really-going-to-a-lab-and-conducting-research-on-rats kind? The excerpt mentions that Jennifer was a researcher on the National Geographic, has lectured at MIT, Harvard, Univ of Virginia. When I read her book, it became obvious to me that she is quite an expert in her field, because not only does she corroborate with other experts in her field by recounting her meetings with them, she talks in depth about her observations of the squid or some such while squatting down in the wet prarie fields. Anyone willing to rough it up in knee deep dirt, has enough hands on experience to know what she is writing about. Good enough for me.

She devotes separate chapters to each of the senses, and what we have in common with our ancestors. It all makes sense, heh, for example, she explains about how adult humans have a much less sensitive sense of smell that say, a male silkworm moth that can sniff out a quadrillionth of a gram of an odor that the female secreats; and boy am I glad we don't, that's just too creepy stalker-ish. But it's only the adults that lose this developed sense of smell, a baby instantly recognizes its mother's breast purely by sense of smell and they correctly chose their mother in an experiment where they were placed near other lactating mothers as well.

The most interesting chapter that highlights her well chosen title, is the one on how the Seeds of Inheritance are born, how they grow, meet their respective partners, exchange phone numbers, i mean, cellular information, you know what i mean, and give rise to a whole new being. The odds that your baby is what it is, the product of an accidental joining of one sperm in milllions and one egg in hundreds : 1 in 3 billion. Go smoke that in your pipe!

She also devotes chapters to Age, the depths of our mind's memory, and the time clock present in all our cells. We have so much in common with the small cell of a plant or amoeba. I am humbled and at the same time, marveled my Nature's penchance for re-use of materials.

She explains it all in layman language, pretty quick to read through and intersperses it with a personal story, so it's not like reading a textbook. If anything, I think her chapters are too short, I wish she'd gone in more detail or touched upon other factors, for eg, when talking about the time clock in our cells, how does a chemical such as caffeine affect it?

This book is a perfectly good way to start recapturing that sense of awe about Nature. Beats squatting in wet prarie fields to look at squicky, snarly worms, don't you think?

Jennifer doesn't delve into Evolution vs Creationism or any of that. She merely presents her facts on what we have in common, scientifically (yeah, better then calling you an ape to your face), with other species and the meticulous, ever-correcting, intelligent, survival instinct of DNA. It's upto the reader to interpret it however they want.

In short, Recommended.

This is a book about life in the most fundamental sense - its origins, its evolution, its inner workings, its universality. I came to this book with high expectations, after reading the author's earlier "Notes from the Shore", and I was not disappointed. She has wrapped herself around an immensely difficult, complex and (ordinarily) technical subject, and has distilled from it a book which is engaging, warm, occasionally startling, often deeply personal, and always marvelously informative. Ackerman's writing reminds me of treasured conversations with an old friend; she's talking TO us, reacting WITH us to the wonders of heredity and evolution, and to some of the deeper questions that arise from our growing understanding of these near miraculous processes. She's also sharing with us much of her own life and experience, a strategy which could easily distract us but, instead, always serves to illustrate, enlighten or simply ground her subject with a very human perspective. Perhaps this is what I enjoy most about the book - that the author is inviting us to share her sense of wonder at the world around us (and, I think, at the language that allows us to do so). It's a rare talent, and I look forward to seeing where that sense of wonder takes her next.

It is often heard that there is no beauty in the "world according to Darwin", that biology has unweaved the rainbow and left no joy or beauty in its place. Not true, as demonstrated by this personal and scientific tour of modern biology. Ackerman covers a broad range of topics but always with a deeply personal viewpoint, and manages to tell at once the joys and sorrows of her life and the scientific story behind them. A true joy to read.