Genetic History

In the beginning, Earth was an inhospitably alien place—in constant chemical flux, covered with churning seas, crafting its landscape through incessant volcanic eruptions. Amid all this tumult and disaster, life began. The earliest living things were no more than membranes stretched across microscopic gaps in rocks, where boiling hot jets of mineral-rich water gushed out from cracks in the ocean floor. In A (Very) Short History of Life on Earth, Henry Gee zips through the last 4.6 billion years with infectious enthusiasm and intellectual rigor.

In 2018, scientists manipulated the DNA of human babies for the first time. As biologist and historian Matthew Cobb shows in As Gods, this achievement was one many scientists have feared from the start of the genetic age. Four times in the last fifty years, geneticists, frightened by their own technology, have called a temporary halt to their experiments. They ought to be frightened.

While plenty of entertaining books have been written about the history of alcohol and other intoxicants, none have offered a comprehensive, convincing answer to the basic question of why humans want to get high in the first place. Drunk elegantly cuts through the tangle of urban legends and anecdotal impressions that surround our notions of intoxication to provide the first rigorous, scientifically grounded explanation for our love of alcohol.

Why did humans abandon hunting and gathering for sedentary communities dependent on livestock and cereal grains and governed by precursors of today's states? Most people believe that plant and animal domestication allowed humans, finally, to settle down and form agricultural villages, towns, and states, which made possible civilization, law, public order, and a presumably secure way of living. But archaeological and historical evidence challenges this narrative.

A fascinating investigation of the origin of humans based on incredible new discoveries and advanced scientific technology.

In this landmark medical narrative, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalists Mark Johnson and Kathleen Gallagher chronicle the story of Nic Volker, the Wisconsin boy at the center of a daring breakthrough in medicine - a complete gene sequencing to discover the cure for an otherwise undiagnosable illness.

Most claims of Native American ancestry rest on the mother's ethnicity. This can be verified by a DNA test determining what type of mitochondrial DNA she passed to you. A hundred participants in DNA Consultants multi-phase Cherokee DNA Study did just that. What they had in common is they were previously rejected - by commercial firms, genealogy groups, government agencies and tribes. Their mitochondrial DNA was not classified as Native American. These are the "anomalous" Cherokee.

Welcome to The DNA Guide for Adoptees: How to use genealogy and genetics to uncover your roots, connect with your biological family, and better understand your medical history. If you are an adoptee, there’s likely missing information about your past and you hope to change that. You’ve come to the right place! This book is for you if you have hope that DNA testing might open up the search for information about yourself, your origins, and your future. We’ve worked hard to compile the resources in this book and explain in plain English how DNA and genealogical records fit together like ...

In the mid-1970s, scientists began using DNA sequences to reexamine the history of all life. Perhaps the most startling discovery to come out of this new field is horizontal gene transfer (HGT), or the movement of genes across species lines. For instance, we now know that roughly eight percent of the human genome arrived not through traditional inheritance from directly ancestral forms, but sideways by viral infection - a type of HGT. In The Tangled Tree David Quammen chronicles these discoveries through the lives of the researchers who made them.

In this stunning narrative spanning more than 200 million years, Steve Brusatte, a young American paleontologist who has emerged as one of the foremost stars of the field - discovering 10 new species and leading groundbreaking scientific studies and fieldwork - masterfully tells the complete, surprising, and new history of the dinosaurs, drawing on cutting-edge science to dramatically bring to life their lost world and illuminate their enigmatic origins, spectacular flourishing, astonishing diversity, cataclysmic extinction, and startling living legacy.

Leading futurist and OneShared.World founder Jamie Metzl explores how genome sequencing, gene editing, artificial intelligence, and other technologies are not only changing our lives, but catalyzing each other in radical and accelerating ways. These technologies have the potential to improve our health, feed billions of people, supercharge our economies, and store essential information for millions of years, but can also—if we are not careful—do immeasurable harm.

Charles Darwin’s theories, first published more than 150 years ago, still set the paradigm of how we understand the evolution of life—but scientific advances of recent decades have radically altered that understanding. In fact the currently accepted history of life on Earth is flawed and out of date. Now two pioneering scientists, one already an award-winning popular author, deliver an eye-opening narrative that synthesizes a generation’s worth of insights from new research.

The New York Times best-selling author of Darwin’s Doubt presents groundbreaking scientific evidence of the existence of God, based on breakthroughs in physics, cosmology, and biology.

From breasts and orgasms to periods, pregnancies, and menopause—A Brief History of the Female Body is a fascinating science book explaining the mysteries of the female body through an evolutionary lens.

Discover an alternate history to the human race as the authors of Forbidden Archeology challenge one of the most fundamental components of the modern scientific world view. Michael Cremo and Richard Thompson discuss the work of researchers who, over the past 2 centuries, have found bones and artifacts showing that people like ourselves existed on earth millions of years ago.

Discover the fascinating journey of life on Earth in this comprehensive guide, 'The Evolution of Life: From Single Cells to Humankind'. From the origins of life to the present day, this book explores the key events, theories, and innovations that have shaped our understanding of life's evolution. With detailed chapters on topics such as the emergence of genetic engineering, the evolution of artificial intelligence, and the impact of climate change, this book provides a unique perspective on the future of life on Earth. Filled with cutting-edge information and expert insights, this book is a...

Over billions of years, ancient fish evolved to walk on land, reptiles transformed into birds that fly, and apelike primates evolved into humans that walk on two legs, talk, and write. For more than a century, paleontologists have traveled the globe to find fossils that show how such changes have happened.

In Other Minds, Peter Godfrey-Smith, a distinguished philosopher of science and a skilled scuba diver, tells a bold new story of how subjective experience crept into being—how nature became aware of itself. As Godfrey-Smith stresses, it is a story that largely occurs in the ocean, where animals first appeared.

Who are we? How do scientists define Homo sapiens, and how does our species differ from the extinct hominins that came before us? In this accessible account palaeoarchaeologist Paul Pettitt shows how the latest scientific advances, especially in genetics, are revolutionizing our understanding of human evolution. Pettitt reveals the extraordinary story of how our ancestors adapted to unforgiving and relentlessly changing climates, leading to remarkable innovations in art, technology, and society that we are only now beginning to comprehend.

High in the Canadian Rockies is a small limestone quarry formed 530 million years ago called the Burgess Shale. It holds the remains of an ancient sea where dozens of strange creatures lived—a forgotten corner of evolution preserved in awesome detail. In this book, Stephen Jay Gould explores what the Burgess Shale tells us about evolution and the nature of history.