My Beautiful Genome
and over one million other books are available for Amazon Kindle .
Learn more
| ||||||||||||||||||||
 Trade In this Item for up to £0.25
Get an extra £5 when you trade in books worth £10 or more until June 30, 2012. Trade in My Beautiful Genome: Exposing Our Genetic Future, One Quirk at a Time for an Amazon.co.uk gift card of up to £0.25, which you can then spend on millions of items across the site. Trade-in values may vary (terms apply). Find more products eligible for trade-in.
|
Frequently Bought Together
Product details
|
More About the Author
Product Description
Review
'My Beautiful Genome covers some of the most interesting controversies in biology today, including designer babies, brain imaging and even whether or not we have free will. It's an enthralling read.' --New Scientist
'A pin-sharp, lively memoir-cum-investigation... Frank's discoveries make for some truly tingling moments... Absorbing.' --Mail on Sunday
'The huge research effort to understand the complexity of the genome is throwing up new insights into the nature of humanity, as the Danish science writer Lone Frank shows in My Beautiful Genome, her excellent look into the postgenomic world.... Fascinating.' --Financial Times
'A pin-sharp, lively memoir-cum-investigation... Frank's discoveries make for some truly tingling moments... Absorbing.' --Mail on Sunday
'The huge research effort to understand the complexity of the genome is throwing up new insights into the nature of humanity, as the Danish science writer Lone Frank shows in My Beautiful Genome, her excellent look into the postgenomic world.... Fascinating.' --Financial Times
Review
Review Source: Publishers WeeklyReview Date: 6 June 2011Review Content: A probing biological memoir... Refreshing [and] wonderfully poetic.
--This text refers to an alternate
Paperback
edition.
Tags Customers Associate with This Product(What's this?)Click on a tag to find related items, discussions, and people.
|
What Other Items Do Customers Buy After Viewing This Item?
Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
6 of 6 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
This book asks more questions than it answers, because the science discussed here is so very young. Lone Frank does not try to over simplify or produce easy certainties. The world she describes is uncertain, full of contradictions, and not yet coherent. By interviewing many different researchers, we get an overview of various current schools of thought, rather than one narrow viewpoint.
Her stroke of genius is in the way she presents the material. She uses herself as a human guinea pig. Because of the way she gradually uncovers more of her own genome, the book operates on one level as kind of auto biography. That's what makes it such a page turner - as you get more and more hooked on Lone Frank's biographical story you really can't wait to find out what type of BRCA gene she has. And by making the subject so personal, she converts what could be a dry and dusty academic discussion of some quite complex science into a joyful read.
While much has yet to be worked out, several interesting and somewhat controversial conclusions come out along the way. Like the finding that different races of humans really are qualitatively different. That our society currently practices a form of eugenics, and most of us approve of it. That the genome is not completely stable, and can be influenced by its environment (epigenetics). That our free will is limited, but ironically we can maximise what free will we have by acknowledging the features that are pre determined by our genes.
Highly recommended.
Her stroke of genius is in the way she presents the material. She uses herself as a human guinea pig. Because of the way she gradually uncovers more of her own genome, the book operates on one level as kind of auto biography. That's what makes it such a page turner - as you get more and more hooked on Lone Frank's biographical story you really can't wait to find out what type of BRCA gene she has. And by making the subject so personal, she converts what could be a dry and dusty academic discussion of some quite complex science into a joyful read.
While much has yet to be worked out, several interesting and somewhat controversial conclusions come out along the way. Like the finding that different races of humans really are qualitatively different. That our society currently practices a form of eugenics, and most of us approve of it. That the genome is not completely stable, and can be influenced by its environment (epigenetics). That our free will is limited, but ironically we can maximise what free will we have by acknowledging the features that are pre determined by our genes.
Highly recommended.
5 of 5 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
I have to side with Mary Roach on this one - Frank's take on personal genomics really is both sharp and friggin' funny. I am not a genomics nerd by any means but after reading Frank's "The Neurotourist" I had to get my hands on this one too. I like her approach to writing about science. It is at once both deeply personal - she has a distinctive voice and she uses herself in the narrative - and always concerned with the general perspective. You follow Frank through various psychological and genetic tests, some of them quite unsettling. She goes beyond ancestry and the usual disease risks and into the genetics of personality and behaviour. By way of her own insights she elegantly gets into discussing how consumer genomics will affect society as such. The narrative feels more like a novel than a popular science account and there is a great drive all through the book. The mix of straight reporting, one on one interviews with leading figures in the field and the author's own thoughts and analyses works to give the book balance and nuance. When you're done, there is still plenty to think about.
Format:Paperback
I have to agree with Michael Shermer that this book is a genuine page-turner. It works very well as popular science and covers many of the topics general readers will want to see - getting your own genome interpreted, diseases, epigenetics, sexual attraction, abortion, personality, ethical problems, determinism, etc. Lone Frank even touches on the taboo topic of eugenics. Her journalist's easy and often humorous interview style, moving across continents and via Skype, brings the key scientists alive and she isn't at all shy of using vivifying personal disclosures of her own. The science and its applications have a long way to go but Frank shows a knack here for zooming in succinctly on the trends in genetic research that have begun to really count. Anyone interested in human development, identity, individual differences and personality traits should read it.
Would you like to see more reviews about this item?
Were these reviews helpful?
Let us know
Most Recent Customer Reviews
Strictly reviewing pricing!
A potentially interesting book - but why the rip of price for the Kindle edition?
I accept the VAT but please explain why this is more expensive than the paperback.
I accept the VAT but please explain why this is more expensive than the paperback.
Published 1 month ago by Steve Marshall
good for non-academics
this book is unique in the way that the author uses herself as a prop to go through various genetic tests and then discusses the results with pros. Read more
Published 7 months ago by asp
A very informative and entertaining book indeed!
A very informative and entertaining book for all of us interrested in genetics from a layman perspective. Read more
Published 8 months ago by Kurt
Customer Discussions
|
This product's forum
Active discussions in related forums
Search Customer Discussions
|
Related forums
|
Listmania!
|
|
Look for similar items by category
Look for similar items by subject
Feedback
- Would you like to update product info or give feedback on images?
- I am the Author, and I want to comment on my book.
- I am the Publisher, and I want to comment on this book.
|
