Genetics & Heredity

Maybe DNA Can’t Answer All Our Questions About Heredity  The author suggests that “misunderstanding the role DNA does or doesn’t play in determining one’s fate can have dangerous consequences.”

What Can We Learn from Our DNA  “Inexpensive genetic testing is a game changer for psychological research. But is it a research tool, a fortune-teller or both?”A Brief History of Everyone Who Ever Lived: The Human Story Retold Through Our Genes, By Adam Rutherford   The author “explains exactly how genomics is completely rewriting the human story — from 100,000 years ago to the present.

Blueprint: How DNA Makes Us Who We Are, by Robert Plomin  “A top behavioral geneticist makes the case that DNA inherited from our parents at the moment of conception can predict our psychological strengths and weaknesses.”

DNA Is Not Destiny: The Remarkable, Completely Misunderstood Relationship Between You and Your Genes, by Steven J. Heine  “One of the world’s leading cultural psychologists debunks the hype surrounding DNA testing and puts to rest our mistaken anxieties about our genes.”

The Gene: An Intimate History, by Siddhartha Mukherjee  The Pulitzer Prize-winning author of “The Emperor of All Maladies” “brings to life the quest to understand human heredity and its surprising influence on our lives, personalities, identities, fates, and choices.”

Hacking Darwin: Genetic Engineering and the Future of Humanity, by Jamie Metzl  An exploration of the potential consequences of biotechnology and the genetic revolution

How to Code a Human: Exploring the DNA Blueprints That Make Us Who We Are, by Kat Arney  An award-winning author “investigates all aspects of modern genetics, from the evolution of our species to inherited disease, from ‘junk’ DNA to the molecular processes inside our cells.”

Innate: How the Wiring of Our Brains Shapes Who We Are, by Kevin J. Mitchell  A leading neuroscientist “traces human diversity and individual differences to their deepest level: in the wiring of our brains.”

She Has Her Mother’s Laugh: The Powers, Perversions, and Potential of Heredity, by Carl Zimmer   The author “weaves together tales of scientific advance and pseudoscientific poison, heroes and villains, reflections on being a father to two daughters, analyses of his own genome revealing curious distant ancestors, and investigative reporting into cutting-edge discoveries that will shape the lives of all children to come.

Who We Are and How We Got Here: Ancient DNA and the New Science of the Human Past, by David Reich  The author “delves into how the genomic revolution is transforming our understanding of modern humans and how DNA studies reveal deep inequalities among different populations, between the sexes, and among individuals.