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Introducing Genetics [Paperback]

Steve Jones (Author), Borin Van Loon (Illustrator)

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Product details

Paperback: 176 pages
Publisher: Icon Books Ltd; New edition edition (7 April 2005)
Language English
ISBN-10: 1840466367
ISBN-13: 978-1840466362
Product Dimensions: 20.6 x 13.8 x 1.8 cm

Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars See all reviews (5 customer reviews)

Amazon Bestsellers Rank: 135,881 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

#90 in	Books > Scientific, Technical & Medical > Biology > Molecular Biology
#59 in	Books > Scientific, Technical & Medical > Biology > Genetics > Genomics
#79 in	Books > Science & Nature > Popular Science > Genetics

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Product Description

Genetics is the newest of all sciences - nothing useful was known about inheritance until just over a century ago. Now genetics is exploding, and before long we will have the complete code, written in three thousand million letters of DNA, of what makes a human being.

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It is also about similarities - between relatives, alive or dead and between different creatures, living or extinct. Read the first page

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14 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars DEOXYRIBOSE NUCLEIC ACID, G.C.T.A. AND H.Y.P.E., 3 Oct 2007

By	DAVID BRYSON (Glossop Derbyshire England) - See all my reviews (TOP 50 REVIEWER) (VINE VOICE) (REAL NAME)

This review is from: Introducing Genetics (Paperback)

This 2005 edition may exhibit an updated text. My own copy of the book is a 2001 reprint of the original text from 1993, and one thing that struck me as I read it was that over those 8 years there appeared to have been no changes made. Not only is genetics a very modern science, its profile has risen spectacularly within the scientific community over a period of not many years, so I expect there must have been a fair amount of updating to do. Nevertheless this is explicitly a book for beginners, the approach taken is chronological in recounting the successive discoveries, the author is a leading and eminent expert who presumably would not have countenanced reprints of any statements he wished to retract, so I have to suppose that the text as I have it remains valid as far as it goes. We beginners have to begin at the beginning, this is the beginning, reviews here are almost non-existent, and it may be helpful in that case if I give my fellow neophytes some idea of what to expect, even if I am not fully up to date.

Professor Steve Jones of University College London is well known, at least in Britain, from television. Everyone has heard of DNA these days even if they do not know what those letters stand for (see my caption above). We have clearly opened another Pandora's box by dabbling in this matter, and in my edition Jones concludes by touching on the ethical and political issues that our new discoveries raise. Whatever additions or amendments he may have added in retrospect, his remarks reflect his mindset, which is level-headed and humane, and his media appearances have not suggested to me that he has espoused any significantly new views in these respects.

The main narrative is historical, in the simple chronological sense. Jones really starts with Mendel and his experiments on peas, having given Darwin only a cursory mention before that. Other major figures are given what I take to be their due mention, the main actors are, expectedly, Crick and Watson the discoverers of the double helix, and subsequent research is also noted in my edition up to `the 1990's'. The picture I gained was much what I would have thought - advances in research have shown the matter to be enormously more complex than even Crick and Watson, let alone Mendel, envisaged. However the basic models that these pioneers created seem to have stood the test of time and look likely to continue to. The tedious debate over creationism is mercifully ignored, although the author readily admits that the phenomenon of being alive, whereby living tissue creates new tissue, remains a mystery, at least so far. Science can now trace the processes at work in detail, but what these processes ultimately are seems unidentified.

The original text is credited to not just Steve Jones but also to the illustrator Borin Van Loon [sic]. Every page from start to finish, or at least until we reach Jones's `footnote', is larded with illustrative matter, mostly cartoons. Whether some readers may find this style patronising I don't know, but if so I for one was quite happy to be patronised. For all the clarity of Jones's exposition the main text can't avoid being slightly heavy going here and there, and I found that the illustrations lightened my own going very successfully. It all seems very simple to start with, but here and there new terms creep in without prior explanation, although they are usually clarified before too long. The style is basically that of a good lecturer with a sense of how to keep the audience's attention without diluting or over-simplifying the message.

Jones comments wryly that while for scientists the four letters of the genetic `alphabet' are G C T A, now that the subject has got well and truly into the public and tabloid domain H Y P E might sometimes seem to characterise the discussion better. Genetics explains much, and it opens up enormous possibilities in real life, whether these be seen as promises or as threats. In the text as I have it, he hedges his bets and does not over-commit himself to either side of the argument. However he permits himself some down-to-earth observations to the effect that whether or not genetically modified crops may be in some way dangerous, there is no `whether' about it when the food in question is cheeseburgers; and whatever may be said about human cloning the phenomenon is not new but as old as the first ever pair of identical twins.

As an introduction I found this book admirable. We all have, it seems to me, a responsibility to inform ourselves as best we can about subjects as important as this is. When the matter is set out for us as clearly as it is here it is something approaching irresponsible not to take the opportunity we are given, and worse than irresponsible to promote points of view from a basis of culpable ignorance.

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9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars easy to read, 16 Nov 2001

By A Customer

This review is from: Introducing Genetics (Paperback)

the Author explains the basics of genetics via cartoons. This is an amusing book and very useful as an introduction. It is however very superficial and therefore only really for newcomers to genetics or those who want an easy read with some humour.

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16 of 17 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Genetics is a difficult subject. This book makes it simple!, 23 Sep 2000

By A Customer

This review is from: Introducing Genetics (Paperback)

Introducing Genetics by Steve Jones and Borin Van Loon.

Genetics is an area of science that seems to be advancing at a breathtaking rate. Every week there seems to be some new disease which genetics has found the cause of, or some new procedure - such as genetically modifying crops - which generates hysteria in the popular press.

Introducing Genetics provides the reader with a good grounding in this increasingly important discipline of science. By separating fact from myth, this informative book shows the reader how this science has evolved, from its earliest routes in the writings of such renowned scientists as Charles Darwin, to the groundbreaking work on heredity that was conducted by Gregor Mendel.

This book also explains how the revolutionary work of twentieth century scientists, such as James Watson and Francis Crick (amongst others) has led to the opening of a Pandora's box of possibilities, that has the potential to affect all of mankind.

Subjects discussed in this concise and fully illustrated introductory text, include topics as varied as Eugenics, Genetic Engineering, and the genetic testing of unborn babies for inherited diseases. All of which allow the reader to develop a good overall understanding of this increasingly relevant area of science.

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3.0 out of 5 stars The Gene Is Us

In the middle of this book Steve Jones provides a short recapitulation explaining the fundamentals of cells, genes and heredity. Read more

Published 10 months ago by Neutral

3.0 out of 5 stars Good try at telling the history of genetics
I'm generally a fan of these 'Introducing' comic strip style guides, but I wouldn't rate this as one of their best efforts, despite it being authored by a geneticist who already... Read more

Published on 29 July 2008 by Bruno

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