The Violinist's Thumb: And Other Lost Tales of Love, War, and Genius, As Written by Our Genetic Code

Name: The Violinist's Thumb: And Other Lost Tales of Love, War, and Genius, As Written by Our Genetic Code
Price: 4.36 USD
Availability: InStock
ISBN: 9780316182331

ISBN-10: 0316182338

ISBN-13: 9780316182331

Edition: 2013

Authors: Sam Kean

List price: $16.00

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Description:

From New York Times bestselling author Sam Kean comes more incredible stories of science, history, language, and music, as told by our own DNA. In The Disappearing Spoon , bestselling author Sam Kean unlocked the mysteries of the periodic table. In THE VIOLINIST'S THUMB, he explores the wonders of the magical building block of life: DNA. There are genes to explain crazy cat ladies, why other people have no fingerprints, and why some people survive nuclear bombs. Genes illuminate everything from JFK's bronze skin (it wasn't a tan) to Einstein's genius. They prove that Neanderthals and humans bred thousands of years more recently than any of us would feel comfortable thinking. They can even…

Book details

List price: $16.00
Copyright year: 2013
Publisher: Little Brown & Co
Binding: Paperback
Pages: 432
Size: 6.00" wide x 8.50" long x 1.25" tall
Weight: 0.836
Language: English



Introduction



A, C, G, T, and You: How to Read a Genetic Score



Genes, Freaks, DNA: How Do Living Things Pass Down Traits to Their Children?



The Near Death of Darwin: Why Did Geneticists Try to Kill Natural Selection?



Them's the DNA Breaks: How Does Nature Read-and Misread-DNA?



The Musical Score of DNA: What Kinds of Information Does DNA Store?



Our Animal Past: Making Things That Crawl and Frolic and Kill



DNA Vindication: Why Did Life Evolve So Slowly-Then Explode in Complexity?



The Survivors, the Livers: What's Our Most Ancient and Important DNA?



The Machiavelli Microbe: How Much Human DNA Is Actually Human?



Love and Atavisms: What Genes Make Mammals Mammals?



Humanzees and Other Near Misses: When Did Humans Break Away from Monkeys, and Why?



Genes and Geniuses: How Humans Became All Too Human



Scarlet A's, C's, G's, and T's: Why Did Humans Almost Go Extinct?



Size Matters: How Did Humans Get Such Grotesquely Large Brains?



The Art of the Gene: How Deep in Our DNA Is Artistic Genius?



The Oracle of DNA: Genetics in the Past, Present, and Future



The Past Is Prologue-Sometimes: What Can (and Can't) Genes Teach Us About Historical Heroes?



Three Billion Little Pieces: Why Don't Humans Have More Genes Than Other Species?



Easy Come, Easy Go? How Come Identical Twins Aren't Identical?



Life as We Do (and Don't) Know It: What the Heck Will Happen Now?


Epilogue: Genomics Gets Personal


Acknowledgments


Notes and Errata


Selected Bibliography


Index


Reading Group Guide