She Has Her Mother's Laugh

Do you ever take on books about subjects you know almost nothing about? That's me with She Has Her Mother's Laugh. I remember vaguely learning a bit about DNA and genes when I was in school, but that, frankly, was close to fifty years ago. Not everyone can explain science in a way that makes sense to me, but Carl Zimmer can. And if he can explain science to me, trust me on this, it will be smooth sailing for you.

Zimmer reaches back in history to the first attempts to understand heredity, and he shares all the strands of thought to the present day about the ways information is transmitted from one entity to that entity's offspring. Like a good teacher, he leads off each chapter with a compelling story that immediately makes the concepts relevant to the reader. And even though he explores ideas I knew nothing about, including the microbiome and epigenetics and CRISPR gene-editing, I was able to follow his lead and learn just a bit about the amazing world of this branch of science.