Close cookie details

This site uses cookies. Learn more about cookies.

OverDrive would like to use cookies to store information on your computer to improve your user experience at our Website. One of the cookies we use is critical for certain aspects of the site to operate and has already been set. You may delete and block all cookies from this site, but this could affect certain features or services of the site. To find out more about the cookies we use and how to delete them, click here to see our Privacy Policy.

If you do not wish to continue, please click here to exit this site.

Hide notification

  Main Nav
DNA
Cover of DNA
DNA
The Story of the Genetic Revolution
Borrow Borrow
The definitive insider's history of the genetic revolution—significantly updated to reflect the discoveries of the last decade.
James D. Watson, the Nobel laureate whose pioneering work helped unlock the mystery of DNA's structure, charts the greatest scientific journey of our time, from the discovery of the double helix to today's controversies to what the future may hold. Updated to include new findings in gene editing, epigenetics, agricultural chemistry, as well as two entirely new chapters on personal genomics and cancer research. This is the most comprehensive and authoritative exploration of DNA's impact—practical, social, and ethical—on our society and our world.
The definitive insider's history of the genetic revolution—significantly updated to reflect the discoveries of the last decade.
James D. Watson, the Nobel laureate whose pioneering work helped unlock the mystery of DNA's structure, charts the greatest scientific journey of our time, from the discovery of the double helix to today's controversies to what the future may hold. Updated to include new findings in gene editing, epigenetics, agricultural chemistry, as well as two entirely new chapters on personal genomics and cancer research. This is the most comprehensive and authoritative exploration of DNA's impact—practical, social, and ethical—on our society and our world.
Available formats-
  • OverDrive Read
  • EPUB eBook
Languages:-
Copies-
  • Available:
    1
  • Library copies:
    1
Levels-
  • ATOS:
  • Lexile:
  • Interest Level:
  • Text Difficulty:


Excerpts-
  • From the book Chapter One
    . . .

    Beginnings of Genetics: From Mendel to Hitler

    My mother, Bonnie Jean, believed in genes. She was proud of her father's Scottish origins, and saw in him the traditional Scottish virtues of honesty, hard work, and thriftiness. She, too, possessed these qualities and felt that they must have been passed down to her from him. His tragic early death meant that her only nongenetic legacy was a set of tiny little girl's kilts he had ordered for her from Glasgow. Perhaps therefore it is not surprising that she valued her father's biological legacy over his material one.

    Growing up, I had endless arguments with Mother about the relative roles played by nature and nurture in shaping us. By choosing nurture over nature, I was effectively subscribing to the belief that I could make myself into whatever I wanted to be. I did not want to accept that my genes mattered that much, preferring to attribute my Watson grandmother's extreme fatness to her having overeaten. If her shape was the product of her genes, then I too might have a hefty future. However, even as a teenager, I would not have disputed the evident basics of inheritance, that like begets like. My arguments with my mother concerned complex characteristics like aspects of personality, not the simple attributes that, even as an obstinate adolescent, I could see were passed down over the generations, resulting in "family likeness." My nose is my mother's and now belongs to my three sons.

    Sometimes characteristics come and go within a few generations, but sometimes they persist over many. One of the most famous examples of a long-lived trait is known as the "Hapsburg Lip." This distinctive elongation of the jaw and droopiness to the lower lip-which made the Hapsburg rulers of Europe such a nightmare assignment for generations of court portrait painters-was passed down intact over at least twenty-three generations.

    The Hapsburgs added to their genetic woes by intermarrying. Arranging marriages between different branches of the Hapsburg clan and often among close relatives may have made political sense as a way of building alliances and ensuring dynastic succession, but it was anything but astute in genetic terms. Inbreeding of this kind can result in genetic disease, as the Hapsburgs found out to their cost. Charles II, the last of the Hapsburg monarchs in Spain, not only boasted a prize-worthy example of the family lip-he could not even chew his own food-but was also a complete invalid, and incapable, despite two marriages, of producing children.

    Genetic disease has long stalked humanity. In some cases, such as Charles II's, it has had a direct impact on history. Retrospective diagnosis has suggested that George III, the English king whose principal claim to fame is to have lost the American colonies in the Revolutionary War, suffered from an inherited disease, porphyria, which causes periodic bouts of madness. Some historians-mainly British ones-have argued that it was the distraction caused by George's illness that permitted the Americans' against-the-odds military success. While most hereditary diseases have no such geopolitical impact, they nevertheless have brutal and often tragic consequences for the afflicted families, sometimes for many generations. Understanding genetics is not just about understanding why we look like our parents. It is also about coming to grips with some of humankind's oldest enemies: the flaws in our genes that cause genetic disease.

    our ancestors must have wondered about the workings of heredity as soon as evolution endowed them with brains capable of formulating the right kind of question. And the readily...
About the Author-
  • JAMES D. WATSON was director of Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory in New York from 1968 to 1993 and is now its chancellor emeritus. He was the first director of the National Center for Human Genome Research of the National Institutes of Health from 1989 to 1992. A member of the National Academy of Sciences and the Royal Society, he has received the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the National Medal of Science, and, with Francis Crick and Maurice Wilkins, the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1962.
    ANDREW BERRY is a lecturer on Organismic and Evolutionary Biology at Harvard University. A writer and teacher, he is the editor of a collection of the writings of the Victorian biologist Alfred Russel Wallace, Infinite Tropics.
    KEVIN DAVIES is the author of The $1,000 Genome and Cracking the Genome. He is the founding editor of NatureGenetics, the world's leading genetics journal, and Bio-IT World magazine. He is the former publisher of Chemical & Engineering News.
Reviews-
  • Publisher's Weekly

    Starred review from March 3, 2003
    Who better than James Watson to lead a guided tour of DNA? When he and his English colleague, Francis Crick, discovered the double helix structure of the DNA molecule in 1953, little could they imagine that a mere 50 years later scientists would be putting the finishing touches on a map of the human genome. In this magisterial work, Watson, who won the Nobel Prize with Crick for their discovery, guides readers through the startling and rapid advances in genetic technology and what these advances will mean for our lives.Watson covers all aspects of the genome, from the layout of four simple bases on the DNA molecule through their complex construction into genes, then to the mechanisms whereby proteins produced by genes create our uniquely human characteristics—as well as the genetic mutations that can cause illnesses or inherited diseases like Duchenne muscular dystrophy and Huntington's disease.Watson may have mellowed a little over the years since he displayed his youthful brashness in The Double Helix,
    but he still isn't shy about taking on controversial subjects. He criticizes biotech corporations for patenting genes, making diagnostic medical procedures horribly expensive and damping further basic research. He notes that while China and other countries with large populations to feed have eagerly grasped the potential of genetically modified foodstuffs, America squandered $100 million on a recall of taco shells and the genetically modified corn used in them. He pleads passionately for the refinement and widespread use of prenatal genetic testing. Watson will probably provoke the most controversy with his criticism of scientists, corporations and government funding sources for their avoidance of important areas of research—notably the genetics of skin coloration—for political reasons. Every reader who wants to understand their own medical future will want to read this book. 100 color and b&w illus. 150,000 first printing; BOMC and History Book Club selection. (Apr. 7)FYI:A five-part PBS series on DNA featuring Watson will air later this year.

  • Kirkus

    Starred review from July 15, 2017
    A masterful summary of genetic science past, present, and future, from one of its prime movers.Watson (Father to Son: Truth, Reason, and Decency, 2014, etc.)--who, along with Francis Crick and Rosalind Franklin launched a revolution in biology with their 1953 publication of the double helix structure of DNA--reviews all that has happened since his own earlier accounts, including The Double Helix (1968) and the original version of this book (2003). As the author approaches 90, he chronicles the history of the field, with the assistance of Berry (Evolutionary Biology/Harvard Univ.) and Davies (The $1,000 Genome: The Revolution in DNA Sequencing and the New Era of Personalized Medicine, 2010, etc.). The chapters about the race to discover the structure of DNA capture the excitement of that time, but Watson returns to a critical stance as he recalls how alarmist fears about the dangers of recombinant DNA, which made it possible to incorporate foreign DNA into an organism, curbed research in the 1970s. He also condemns those who would ban genetically modified organisms, and he marshals strong evidence in support of GMOs. A major chapter details the Human Genome Project, which begat yet another race, this time between the government and private enterprise. To a large extent, the fallout of that initiative has fueled advances--which Watson summarizes in later chapters--in forensics (DNA fingerprinting) and medicine (the discovery of disease genes and new approaches to cancer treatments). For each application, the author provides guidebooklike details of methods and examples. Now, with the cost of human genome sequencing plunging, huge databases of genomes can be analyzed, with prospects of precision treatments and discoveries of the causes of complex diseases like mental illness and even analyses of behavioral traits. There is no question that in weighing nature vs. nurture, Watson sides with nature. He would use new gene-editing techniques to correct genetic defects in somatic cells and would have no qualms about considering enhancing future generations by editing germline cells (eggs and sperm). In this bible of DNA information, Watson is as provocative and optimistic as ever.

    COPYRIGHT(2017) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

  • Kay Redfield Jamison, Ph.D., Professor of Psychiatry, Johns Hopkins School of Medicine, and author of An Unquiet Mind. "Only James Watson could have written this book: no one else knows DNA from so many perspectives--discoverer, scientific leader, author of one of the great scientific memoirs of all time--and no one else writes in such an utterly riveting and independent manner. DNA is a singularly lucid life story of a molecule and its determining role in human nature, society, medicine, and our future as a species. It is an important book and a delight to read."
Title Information+
  • Publisher
    Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
  • OverDrive Read
    Release date:
  • EPUB eBook
    Release date:
Digital Rights Information+
  • Copyright Protection (DRM) required by the Publisher may be applied to this title to limit or prohibit printing or copying. File sharing or redistribution is prohibited. Your rights to access this material expire at the end of the lending period. Please see Important Notice about Copyrighted Materials for terms applicable to this content.

Status bar:

You've reached your checkout limit.

Visit your Checkouts page to manage your titles.

Close

You already have this title checked out.

Want to go to your Checkouts?

Close

Recommendation Limit Reached.

You've reached the maximum number of titles you can recommend at this time. You can recommend up to 99 titles every 1 day(s).

Close

Sign in to recommend this title.

Recommend your library consider adding this title to the Digital Collection.

Close

Enhanced Details

Close
Close

Limited availability

Availability can change throughout the month based on the library's budget.

is available for days.

Once playback starts, you have hours to view the title.

Close

Permissions

Close

The OverDrive Read format of this eBook has professional narration that plays while you read in your browser. Learn more here.

Close

Holds

Total holds:


Close

Restricted

Some format options have been disabled. You may see additional download options outside of this network.

Close

MP3 audiobooks are only supported on macOS 10.6 (Snow Leopard) through 10.14 (Mojave). Learn more about MP3 audiobook support on Macs.

Close

Please update to the latest version of the OverDrive app to stream videos.

Close

Device Compatibility Notice

The OverDrive app is required for this format on your current device.

Close

Bahrain, Egypt, Hong Kong, Iraq, Israel, Jordan, Kuwait, Lebanon, Libya, Mauritania, Morocco, Oman, Palestine, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, the Sudan, the Syrian Arab Republic, Tunisia, Turkey, the United Arab Emirates, and Yemen

Close

You've reached your library's checkout limit for digital titles.

To make room for more checkouts, you may be able to return titles from your Checkouts page.

Close

Excessive Checkout Limit Reached.

There have been too many titles checked out and returned by your account within a short period of time.

Try again in several days. If you are still not able to check out titles after 7 days, please contact Support.

Close

You have already checked out this title. To access it, return to your Checkouts page.

Close

This title is not available for your card type. If you think this is an error contact support.

Close

An unexpected error has occurred.

If this problem persists, please contact support.

Close

Close

NOTE: Barnes and Noble® may change this list of devices at any time.

Close
Buy it now
and help our library WIN!
DNA
DNA
The Story of the Genetic Revolution
James D. Watson
Choose a retail partner below to buy this title for yourself.
A portion of this purchase goes to support your library.
Close
Close

There are no copies of this issue left to borrow. Please try to borrow this title again when a new issue is released.

Close
Barnes & Noble Sign In |   Sign In

You will be prompted to sign into your library account on the next page.

If this is your first time selecting “Send to NOOK,” you will then be taken to a Barnes & Noble page to sign into (or create) your NOOK account. You should only have to sign into your NOOK account once to link it to your library account. After this one-time step, periodicals will be automatically sent to your NOOK account when you select "Send to NOOK."

The first time you select “Send to NOOK,” you will be taken to a Barnes & Noble page to sign into (or create) your NOOK account. You should only have to sign into your NOOK account once to link it to your library account. After this one-time step, periodicals will be automatically sent to your NOOK account when you select "Send to NOOK."

You can read periodicals on any NOOK tablet or in the free NOOK reading app for iOS, Android or Windows 8.

Accept to ContinueCancel