She Has Her Mother’s Laugh: The Powers, Perversions, And Potential Of Heredity

ADVANCE PRAISE FOR SHE HAS HER MOTHER’S LAUGH “No one unravels the mysteries of science as brilliantly and compellingly as Carl Zimmer, and he has proven it again with She Has Her Mother’s Laugh—a sweeping, magisterial book that illuminates the very nature of who we are.” —David Grann, author of Killers of the Flower Moon and The Lost City of Z “She Has Her Mother’s Laugh is at once far-ranging, imaginative, and totally relevant. Carl Zimmer makes the complex science of heredity read like a novel and explains why the subject has been—and always will be—so vexed.” —Elizabeth Kolbert, author of the Pulitzer Prize–winning The Sixth Extinction “Humans have long noticed something remarkable, namely that organisms are similar but not identical to their parents—in other words, that some traits can be inherited. From this observation has grown the elegant science of genetics, with its dazzling medical breakthroughs. And from this has also grown the toxic pseudosciences of eugenics, Lysenkoism, and Nazi racial ideology. Carl Zimmer traces the intertwined histories of the science and pseudoscience of heredity. Zimmer writes like a dream, teaches a ton of accessible science, and provides the often intensely moving stories of the people whose lives have been saved or destroyed by this topic. I loved this book.” —Robert Sapolsky, Stanford University, author of Behave “She Has Her Mother’s Laugh is a masterpiece—a career-best work from one of the world’s premier science writers, on a topic that literally touches every person on the planet.” —Ed Yong, author of I Contain Multitudes “Nobody writes about science better than Carl Zimmer. As entertaining as he is informative, he has a way of turning the discoveries of science into deeply moving human stories. This book is a timely account of the uses and misuses of some of the science that directly impacts our lives today. It is also a career moment by one of our most important and graceful writers. Here is a book to be savored.” —Neil Shubin, University of Chicago, author of Your Inner Fish “Zimmer is a born storyteller. Or is he an inherited storyteller? The inspiring and heartbreaking stories in She Has Her Mother’s Laugh build a fundamentally new perspective on what previous generations have delivered to us and what we can pass along. An outstanding book and a great accomplishment.” —Daniel Levitin, author of This Is Your Brain on Music and The Organized Mind “One of the most gifted science journalists of his generation, Carl Zimmer tells a gripping human story about heredity from misguided notions that have caused terrible harm to recent ongoing research that promises to unleash more powerful technologies than the world has ever known. The breadth of his perspective is extraordinarily compelling, compassionate, and valuable. Please read this book now.” —Jennifer Doudna, UC Berkeley, coauthor of A Crack in Creation “Carl Zimmer lifts off the lid, dumps out the contents, and sorts through the pieces of one of history’s most problematic ideas: heredity. Deftly touching on psychology, genetics, race, and politics, She Has Her Mother’s Laugh is a superb guide to a subject that is only becoming more important. Along the way, it explains some remarkably complicated science with equally remarkable clarity—a totally impressive job all around.” —Charles C. Mann, author of 1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus “Carl Zimmer is not only among my favorite science writers—he’s also now responsible for making me wonder why there is more Neanderthal DNA on earth right now than when Neanderthals were here, and why humanity is getting taller and smarter in the past few generations. She Has Her Mother’s