56 books like Eight Day of Creation

Once upon a time, we were unaware of DNA. We could tell that taller parents have taller kids, we could select tomato plants for sweeter fruit, and we could even construct plausible relationships between long-extinct animals and their descendants. Still, the nature of the stuff from which these links are made and how it works or fails to work remained a mystery.

Solving this mystery is one of humanity’s most remarkable achievements, and Mukherjee tells the tale with style and humor, weaving in recollections of his family’s encounters with mental illness. Despite my familiarity with the end result, the modern picture of genes, I found much of the history surprising and surprisingly colorful, full of dead ends and creative leaps. The last third of the book, on complex traits like intelligence and illnesses like schizophrenia, isn’t quite as good as the rest, but that takes us to our second… show more.

I love François Jacob’s book. One of my favorite quotes from this is, "Evolution is a tinkerer."

I think that this is a great insight from one of the founders in the field, who shared the Nobel prize in 1965, for showing how genetic information flows from DNA to RNA to protein and that the control or regulation of this could come from proteins binding to regions of DNA upstream from genes.  

I love the way that this book puts solving the genetic code in the context of the development of the "information age" in the 1950s.

This book explains the origins of the popular (but wrong) idea that DNA is the "book of life" and some sort of advanced information system. I call this a ‘one-dimensional’ view of life (as opposed to a four-dimensional view, which takes into account not just sequence but secondary and tertiary structures and how they change with time).

I use this book in my introductory bioinformatics lectures to help get across the "new" concept that, contrary to popular cultural beliefs, DNA is not a language, nor is it a 'sophisticated computer code’. Biology is messy and complicated and very much contextual.

I love to hear stories from the people doing the work, making the discoveries, detailing how science works - sometimes false leads, sometimes by luck, and most importantly, by testing ideas and being careful to make sure that things are not proven wrong. Nothing is ever 100% certain in science, but things that are falsifiable and have stood the test of time are more believable.

I remember being surprised to slowly realize that solving the genetic code was not done by computer scientists but by the experimentalists (biochemists) who used trial and error to see what proteins are made from various combinations of different DNA sequences (for example, a DNA strand that contains only A’s makes a protein with only lysine, so the triple ‘AAA’ makes lysine).

All of Powers’ books are brilliant, for all kinds of reasons. I remember this book when it first came out decades ago. First of all, it’s just great entertainment, a great story with rich characters. Then, at the same time, Powers captures the beauty of science and discovery as he immerses the reader in the time after the discovery of the double-helical structure of DNA when there was a mad rush to figure out how DNA could encode proteins. Powers captures it all and gets the science right and brings in similarities between the DNA code and music and captures what it’s like working in a lab. How is this possible?

James Watson was a clever, pushy, and critical young American molecular biologist exposed to the scientific culture of Britain in the early 1950s.

The book is full of acerbic comments about “stuffy” Cambridge dons and the rules of etiquette that young Jim struggled with, all the while scheming to maintain the various fellowships that allowed him to remain in the UK and pursue his ambition: to understand the chemical nature of the genetic material, DNA.

The book provides a lively account of his collaboration with an older Brit, the brilliant Francis Crick, who was also trying to unscramble DNA. Much of the technical stuff will be incomprehensible to most, but the method the two followed is clear. The partnership was hugely fruitful and the book is a lively account of how science actually works.

Watson and Crick tried everything while coping with competitors and their criticisms as well as their… show more.

A wonderful saga of a cutting-edge research team’s quest to understand and even cure cancer, told with drama, wit and a poetic style.

This was one of the pioneering books that turned science writing into a truly literary pursuit, and the act of reading them into a pleasure like reading a novel.

Although lacking the name recognition of an Einstein, Watson, or Salk, French microbiologist Francois Jacob was one of the most important scientists of the 20th century.

Together with Jacques Monod, his close collaborator, Jacob figured out how genes are regulated, a discovery that underlies all molecular biology. Jacob came to science late in life, after his dreams of becoming a physician were crushed by injuries suffered during World War II.

In this autobiographical blend of scientific and personal discovery, he takes us through his journey as a damaged soldier, fraught human, and brilliant researcher.

This biography brings fully to life the multi-faceted Austrian physicist Erwin Schrödinger. Although best known as the co-inventor of quantum mechanics, he later wrote a book called What is Life which inspired many physicists to apply their talents to biology. Moore gives a full account of Schrödinger’s upbringing, his education, his science, and his extensive philosophical writings. You can judge for yourself if Moore is persuasive when he argues that the erotic intensity of several of Schrödinger’s extramarital affairs helped fuel and found expression in some of his specific scientific achievements. 

I actually got to read this book before it was published because Jessica Freely was in my writer's group.

I fell in love with the characters and was thrilled whenever we got a new chapter. The plot twists and turns, and the finale is nail-biting suspense with mind-altering twists along the way.

It’s a book I wish I had written. Jessica passed away last year, but this novel is a powerful legacy.