Unnatural Selection: Choosing Boys Over Girls, and the Consequences of a World Full of Men

Unnatural Selection: Choosing Boys Over Girls, and the Consequences of a World Full of Men
by Mara Hvistendahl
(20)
Publication Date: May 1, 2012

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Review & Description

AMs. Hvistendahl is a first-rate reporter and has filled Unnatural Selection with gripping detailsA. There is so much to recommend.” AWall Street Journal

AAn important A bracing work of investigative reporting A As news of these (gender) imbalances has spread, many have blamed ancient preferences: India’s patriarchal social systems, for instance, or Chinese beliefs that only boys provide for ageing parents. Hvistendahl’s research puts the lie to these lazy claims.” AFinancial Times

AMassively well-documentedA. A disturbing, engrossing book.” AWashington Post

AIt might be the most important book written about women in years.” ASlate

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #557239 in Books
• Published on: 2012-05-01
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Dimensions: .0" h x .0" w x .0" l, .0 pounds
• Binding: Paperback
• 336 pages

Deep Ancestry: Inside the Genographic Project

Deep Ancestry: Inside the Genographic Project
by Spencer Wells
(40)

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Review & Description

Science tells us we're all related—one vast family sharing a common ancestor who lived in Africa 60,000 years ago. But countless questions remain about our great journey from the birthplace of Homo sapiens to the ends of the Earth. How did we end up where we are? When did we get there? Why do we display such a wide range of colors and features? The fossil record offers some answers, but exciting new genetic research reveals many more, since our DNA carries a complete chronicle of our species and its migrations.

In Deep Ancestry, scientist and explorer Spencer Wells shows how tiny genetic changes add up over time into a fascinating story. Using scores of real-life examples, helpful analogies, and detailed diagrams and illustrations, he translates complicated concepts into accessible language and explains exactly how each and every individual's DNA contributes another piece to the jigsaw puzzle of human history. The book takes readers inside the Genographic Project, the landmark study now assembling the world's largest collection of population genetic DNA samples and employing the latest in testing technology and computer analysis to examine hundreds of thousands of genetic profiles from all over the globe.

Traveling backward through time from today's scattered billions to the handful of early humans who are ancestors to us all, Deep Ancestry shows how universal our human heritage really is. It combines sophisticated science with our compelling interest in family history and ethnic identity—and transcends humankind's shallow distinctions and superficial differences to touch the depths of our common origins.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #283367 in Books
• Published on: 2006-11-21
• Released on: 2006-11-21
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Dimensions: 8.10" h x 1.00" w x 5.20" l, .83 pounds
• Binding: Hardcover
• 256 pages

The Double Helix: A Personal Account of the Discovery of the Structure of DNA

The Double Helix: A Personal Account of the Discovery of the Structure of DNA
by James D. Watson
(120)

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Review & Description

By identifying the structure of DNA, the molecule of life, Francis Crick and James Watson revolutionized biochemistry and won themselves a Nobel Prize. At the time, Watson was only twenty-four, a young scientist hungry to make his mark. His uncompromisingly honest account of the heady days of their thrilling sprint against other world-class researchers to solve one of science's greatest mysteries gives a dazzlingly clear picture of a world of brilliant scientists with great gifts, very human ambitions, and bitter rivalries. With humility unspoiled by false modesty, Watson relates his and Crick's desperate efforts to beat Linus Pauling to the Holy Grail of life sciences, the identification of the basic building block of life. Never has a scientist been so truthful in capturing in words the flavor of his work.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #17873 in Books
• Published on: 2001-06-12
• Released on: 2001-06-12
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Dimensions: .64" h x 5.56" w x 8.52" l, .54 pounds
• Binding: Paperback
• 256 pages

Deep Ancestry: Inside The Genographic Project

Deep Ancestry: Inside The Genographic Project
by Spencer Wells
(40)

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Review & Description

Travel backward through time from today's scattered billions to the handful of early humans who lived in Africa 60,000 years ago and are ancestors to us all.

In Deep Ancestry, scientist and National Geographic explorer Spencer Wells shows how tiny genetic changes add up over time into a fascinating story. Using scores of real-life examples, helpful analogies, and detailed diagrams and illustrations, he explains exactly how each and every individual's DNA contributes another piece to the jigsaw puzzle of human history. The book takes readers inside the Genographic Project—the landmark study now assembling the world's largest collection of DNA samples and employing the latest in testing technology and computer analysis to examine hundreds of thousand of genetic profiles from all over the globe—and invites us all to take part.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #34186 in Books
• Published on: 2007-11-20
• Released on: 2007-11-20
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Dimensions: 7.99" h x .69" w x 5.01" l, .56 pounds
• Binding: Paperback
• 256 pages

Fatal Invention: How Science, Politics, and Big Business Re-create Race in the Twenty-first Century

Fatal Invention: How Science, Politics, and Big Business Re-create Race in the Twenty-first Century
by Dorothy Roberts
(3)
Publication Date: September 4, 2012

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Review & Description

Featured on The Tavis Smiley Show and named one of the ten best black nonfiction books of 2011 by AFRO.com, Fatal Invention is Aa provocative analysis” (Nature) of race, science, and politics by leading legal scholar and social critic Dorothy Roberts. It examines how the archaic belief system underlying the concept of raceArevived by purportedly cutting-edge scienceAundermines a just society and promotes continuing inequality.

AAlarming but not alarmist, controversial but evidential, impassioned but rational” (Publishers Weekly, starred review), Fatal Invention exposes the falseness of the biological concept of raceAused in the past to divide humans and justify prejudice and used today to enable everything from the race-targeted therapies developed in the pharmaceutical industry and stop-and-frisks that disproportionately target African Americans to a proliferation of for-profit ancestry-testing services.

Called Avitally important” and Aa massive achievement” by Race and the Law, AFatal Invention devastatingly counters any argument that can be made for a racial view of genetics” (The Brooklyn Rail).

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #179946 in Books
• Published on: 2012-09-04
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 400 pages

The 10,000 Year Explosion: How Civilization Accelerated Human Evolution

The 10,000 Year Explosion: How Civilization Accelerated Human Evolution
by Gregory Cochran, Henry Harpending
(57)

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Review & Description

A manifesto for and an example of a new kind of history, a biological history, and not just of the prehistoric era Scientists have long believed that the 'great leap forward' that occurred some 40,000 to 50,000 years ago in Europe marked the end of significant biological evolution in humans. In this stunning account of our evolutionary history, top scholars Gregory Cochran and Henry Harpending reject this conventional wisdom and reveal that the human species has undergone a storm of genetic change much more recently. Human evolution in fact accelerated after civilisation arose, they contend, and these ongoing changes have played a pivotal role in human history. They argue that biology explains the expansion of the Indo-Europeans, the European conquest of the Americas, and European Jews' rise to intellectual prominence. In each of these cases, the key was recent genetic change: adult milk tolerance in the early Indo-Europeans that allowed for a new way of life, increased disease resistance among the Europeans settling America, and new versions of neurological genes among European Jews. Ranging across subjects as diverse as human domestication, Neanderthal hybridization, and IQ tests, Cochran and Harpending's analysis demonstrates convincingly that human genetics have changed and can continue to change much more rapidly than scientists have previously believed. A provocative and fascinating look at human evolution, "The 10,000 Year Explosion" reveals the ongoing interplay between culture and biology in the making of the human race.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #97374 in Books
• Published on: 2010-10-19
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Dimensions: .90" h x 6.10" w x 9.10" l, .80 pounds
• Binding: Paperback
• 304 pages

Before the Dawn: Recovering the Lost History of Our Ancestors

Before the Dawn: Recovering the Lost History of Our Ancestors
by Nicholas Wade
(131)

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Review & Description

Nicholas Wade’s articles are a major reason why the science section has become the most popular, nationwide, in the New York Times. In his groundbreaking Before the Dawn, Wade reveals humanity’s origins as never before—a journey made possible only recently by genetic science, whose incredible findings have answered such questions as: What was the first human language like? How large were the first societies, and how warlike were they? When did our ancestors first leave Africa, and by what route did they leave? By eloquently solving these and numerous other mysteries, Wade offers nothing less than a uniquely complete retelling of a story that began 500 centuries ago.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #20891 in Books
• Published on: 2007-03-27
• Released on: 2007-03-27
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Dimensions: .71" h x 5.56" w x 8.38" l, .62 pounds
• Binding: Paperback
• 320 pages