Life Unfolding

By Jamie A. Davies,

Book cover of Life Unfolding: How the Human Body Creates Itself

Book description

Where did I come from? Why do I have two arms but just one head? How is my left leg the same size as my right one? Why are the fingerprints of identical twins not identical? How did my brain learn to learn? Why must I die?

Questions like these…

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Why read it?

2 authors picked Life Unfolding as one of their favorite books. Why do they recommend it?

This is basic developmental biology written in a way that is fully accessible to a lay reader. I found that it provides clear and intuitive insights into the conceptual framework rather than primarily descriptive account of human development in the womb.

I am fascinated by questions such as how creatures as complicated as animals and humans can arise from a single fertilized egg, and this book does a great job of getting down to the nitty-gritty of this complex process without using overly technical language. 

This is a book I have reread twice. 

I continue to be amazed by the way in which simple cells and inorganic molecules self-organize to create tissues, organs, and eventually whole babies, all without a master plan. We can brag all we want about generative AI, but this is all done without any centralized computing.

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Tap Dancing on Everest, part coming-of-age memoir, part true-survival adventure story, is about a young medical student, the daughter of a Holocaust survivor raised in N.Y.C., who battles self-doubt to serve as the doctor—and only woman—on a remote Everest climb in Tibet.

The team attempts a new route up…

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