Overview

Steve Jones’s highly acclaimed, double prize-winning, bestselling first book is now fully revised to cover all the new genetic breakthroughs from GM food to Dolly the sheep.’An essential sightseer’s guide to our own genetic terrain.’ Peter Tallack, Sunday Telegraph ’Superb and stimulating…an exhilarating trip around the double spiral of DNA, a rush of gravity-defying concepts and wild swerves of the scientific imagination.’ J.G. Ballard, Daily Telegraph ’Not so much divination as demystification… An attempt to bring genetics and evolution more into the public domain. If, for instance, you ever wondered just what genetic engineering is about, here is as good a place as any to discover. Few have Jones’s ability to communicate a difficult idea with such humour, clarity, precision and ease.’ Laurence Hurst, Times Higher ; ‘Sensitive to the social issues raised by genetics… yet Jones’s interest reaches beyond contemporary social issues to the human past, to what genetics can and cannot tell us about our evolution and patterns of social development. He interleaves a broad knowledge of biology with considerations of cultural, demographic and – as his title indicates – linguistic history. At once instructive and captivating.’ Daniel J.Kevles, London Review of Books

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9780006552437

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Reviews

Jones manages to combine being a professor of genetics at University College London with a career as a science writer and broadcaster. This book grew out of his 1991 Reith Lectures, and argues that the evolution of our genes may be compared to the evolution of langauge. Jones asserts that genetics can help us unravel the mechanisms and fortunes of human evolution in far more detail and with greater confidence than was possible a few years ago. His book demonstrates how close we are to success in the search for our origins. Drawing on complementary studies in anthropology and cultural studies as well discoveries in the field of genetics, The Language of the Genes deals with pedigrees, mutations, natural selection and other processes that led to the origins of humanity and the divergence of human popualtions from each other and from other primates. It also looks at the way genetic studies have been misused by society (including the dark 'science' of the Nazis). (Kirkus UK)

Author Information

Steve Jones is Professor of Genetics and Head of the Galton Laboratory, University College, London. In 1991 he gave the BBC Reith Lectures on the subject of genetics and evolution. In 1996, the Royal Society presented him with the Michael Faraday Award given annually to the scientist who has done the most to further the public understanding of science. Professor Jones was born in Wales, educated in Scotland and lives in London. He is co-editor of the Cambridge Encyclopedia of Human Evolution, and joint author of Genetics for Beginners and of the Open University’s final-year genetics textbook. On balance he prefers snails to humans.

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