Table of Contents

Unit - Part I: A Stroke on the Cheek Chapter - 1: The Light Trifle of His Substance Chapter - 2: Traveling Across the Face of Time Chapter - 3: This Race Should End with Them Chapter - 4: Attagirl Unit - Part II: Wayward DNA Chapter - 5: An Evening's Revelry Chapter - 6: The Sleeping Branches Chapter - 7: Individual Z Chapter - 8: Mongrels Chapter - 9: Nine Foot High Complete Chapter - 10: Ed and Fred Unit - Part III: Other Channels Chapter - 11: Ex Ovo Omnia Chapter - 12: Witches'- Broom Chapter - 13: Chimeras Unit - Part IV: Other Channels Chapter - 14: You, My Friend, Are a Wonderland Chapter - 15: Flowering Monsters Chapter - 16: The Teachable Ape Unit - Part V: The Sun Chariot Chapter - 17: Yet Did He Greatly Dare Chapter - 18: Orphaned at Conception Chapter - 19: The Planet's Heirs

Promotional Information

Award-winning, celebrated New York Times columnist and science writer Carl Zimmer presents a history of our understanding of heredity in this sweeping, resonating overview of a force that shaped human society - a force set to shape our future even more radically.

About the Author

Carl Zimmer reports from the frontiers of biology, where scientists are expanding our understanding of life. Since 2013 he has been a columnist at the New York Times. He is a popular speaker at universities, medical schools, museums, and festivals, and he is also a frequent on radio programs such as Radiolab and This American Life. In 2016, Zimmer won the Stephen Jay Gould Prize, awarded annually by the Society for the Study of Evolution to recognise individuals whose sustained efforts have advanced public understanding of evolutionary science.

Reviews

Beautifully written . . . [A] grand and sweeping book. * The Times *
Nuanced, entertaining and balances eloquent story-telling with well-researched science . . . Anyone interested in their path through history, and what they may hand on, will find much to excite them. -- Book of the Week * New Scientist *
Fascinating . . . Absorbing . . . Deftly persuasive. * Observer *
She Has Her Mother's Laugh is packed full of learning, and years of work . . . The book offers clear insights into a fast-moving area, and asks big questions. Scientists can eradicate diseases, alter DNA and change human heredity. Should they? What could be at stake if they get it wrong? * Guardian *
This is cutting-edge stuff that could be heavy-going except that it is written by Carl Zimmer, one of our best science journalists . . . He makes complex topics accessible with his sparkling storytelling and beautiful writing . . . If you want to . . . know where the DNA revolution is headed, you can't do better than this book, which is a joy to read. * Evening Standard *
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
Zimmer is a born story-teller. Or is he an inherited story-teller? 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 great accomplishment. -- Daniel Levitin, author of This is Your Brain on Music and The Organized Mind
Extraordinary . . . This book is Zimmer at his best: obliterating misconceptions about science with gentle prose. * New York Review of Books *
Expansive, engrossing, and often enlightening. * Wired *
Why do children look like their parents and siblings, but still differ from one another? . . . Engrossing . . . Zimmer's book is an excellent way to get up to speed. * Washington Post *
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 Pulitzer Prize winner The Sixth Extinction
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 New York Times bestseller 1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus
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, #1 New York Times bestselling author, award-winning staff writer at The New Yorker, and author of The Lost City of Z
A thoroughly enchanting tour of big questions, oddball ideas, and dazzling accomplishments of researchers searching to explain, manipulate, and alter inheritance. * Kirkus Reviews (starred review) *
A magnificent work . . . Journalist Zimmer masterfully blends exciting storytelling with first-rate science reporting. His book is as engrossing as it is enlightening. * Publishers Weekly (starred review) *
11 Fantastic Science Books to Binge Over the Holidays -- The Year in Review, 2018 * Wired *