She Has Her Mother’s Laugh: The Powers, Perversions, and Potential of Heredity
By Carl Zimmer
Picador, 672 pages, £25
This book records the history of genetics; the remarkable discoveries it has enabled; our ability to manipulate genes; the opportunities and dangers this poses; and the effect that this has had, and continues to have, on the environment, all laced with a persistent interest in perceptions of race. However, the themes are in danger of drowning within a chaotic sea of contrived ‘scene-setting’ and journalistic overwriting.
The book begins with the worst summary of the development of genealogy I have ever read. Titles, crowns and laws of succession, Zimmer claims, were inventions of the Middle Ages; recorded genealogies only superseded oral history in 14th-century Venice and it was not until the 15th century that pedigrees became “instantly recognizable”. We know, of course, that this is complete rubbish. Look at our ancient AngloSaxon and Welsh royal genealogies that were recorded in the Dark Ages, for instance; the rich legacy of Greek and Trojan dynastic pedigrees; and the well-recorded kings ruling Mesopotamia and Egypt, some 5,000 years ago. But what if children were to read this and, being impressed by Zimmer’s credentials as an award-winning science writer, they were to believe him?
His forays into history are seldom enlightening, and seem to be made simply – and tediously – to show off his perception that our forebears could not possibly view their world with the same clarity that he, bathed in the clear light of modern science, seems to think he can. A competent editor could remove these nuisances and excavate the very interesting science buried in this outpouring to create a much more structured book, two-thirds the length, and reword careless sentences like “Morgan’s students bred a line of yellow flies, and when they became professors years later…”. If genetics could really turn flies into professors, it would be a remarkable thing indeed! Anthony Adolph is a genealogist and author