The Gene

Spanning the globe and several centuries, this is the story of the quest to decipher the master-code that makes and defines humans, that governs our form and function. It is also an intimate history of the author's own family and its recurring pattern of mental illness, reminding us that genetics is vitally relevant to everyday lives.

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** NEW YORK TIMES NUMBER ONE BESTSELLER **

The Gene is the story of one of the most powerful and dangerous ideas in our history from the author of The Emperor of All Maladies.

The story begins in an Augustinian abbey in 1856, and takes the reader from Darwin’s groundbreaking theory of evolution, to the horrors of Nazi eugenics, to present day and beyond - as we learn to “read” and “write” the human genome that unleashes the potential to change the fates and identities of our children.

Majestic in its scope and ambition, The Gene provides us with a definitive account of the epic history of the quest to decipher the master-code that makes and defines humans – and paints a fascinating vision of both humanity’s past and future.

For fans of Sapiens by Yuval Noah Harari, A Brief History of Time by Stephen Hawking and Being Mortal by Atul Gwande.

‘Siddhartha Mukherjee is the perfect person to guide us through the past, present, and future of genome science’ Bill Gates

‘A thrilling and comprehensive account of what seems certain to be the most radical, controversial and, to borrow from the subtitle, intimate science of our time…Read this book and steel yourself for what comes next’ Sunday Times