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It Takes a Genome: How a Clash Between Our Genes and Modern Life Is Making Us Sick by Greg Gibson
kstep1805's review against another edition
3.0
This book started off pretty deep and got shallow quick. I felt like at first I got a pretty good overview of how genes and our environment work together to cause many of the diseases plaguing us today. The first two chapters on breast cancer and diabetes seems particularly intriguing. But it quickly lost steam.
I do not have a background in biology and certainly not genetics so I am dependent entirely on the author's explanations. I do, however, have a background in psychology and his chapter on depression seemed fantastical. The way he described depression, as walking a tight rope walking over Niagra Falls, seemed a little melodramatic. Many people who suffer from depression are not suicidal but from his accounting large portions of the country are merely one step from the final act. His attributes to marital warfare being accountable to the generational wars of World War I, World War II, Vietnam, Gulf War I and Gulf War II were a little fallacious as well. Only small portions of the population fought in Vietnam, and smaller still the two recent gulf wars. In fact only a small minority of people today would have their lives immediately impacted by the War on Terror, making his claim that 9/11 has greatly increased people's fears, which on a practical level seems untrue and where there may be evidence it could be attributed to so many factors, it would be very difficult to prove conclusively that a terror attack which killed .00001% of the population could have that stark of an impact compared to the diseases, territorial disputes, and general violence that plagued our fore fathers for countless generations before us. Overall, his lack of experience and understanding led me to call into question the rest of his book, but I since I have nothing to go by, I will take this all at face value.
Finally, he added too many political points and tried to make too many jokes to seem truly professional. Scientists need only present the facts, and while the jokes may make it more entertaining, too many of his jokes seemed like inside, personal jokes that I didn't get to improve the enjoyment of this book. Making political points may seem salient, to me, it just blurs the line between rationality and emotionality, making me question once again, if the author was truly being objective in his study or was just collecting only the data that helped him make his point, and I pointed out in the paragraph above, where I did have background, some of this seemed suspicious.
So while I feel like I got a better understanding of the human genome, I can't really give this more than an average rating.
I do not have a background in biology and certainly not genetics so I am dependent entirely on the author's explanations. I do, however, have a background in psychology and his chapter on depression seemed fantastical. The way he described depression, as walking a tight rope walking over Niagra Falls, seemed a little melodramatic. Many people who suffer from depression are not suicidal but from his accounting large portions of the country are merely one step from the final act. His attributes to marital warfare being accountable to the generational wars of World War I, World War II, Vietnam, Gulf War I and Gulf War II were a little fallacious as well. Only small portions of the population fought in Vietnam, and smaller still the two recent gulf wars. In fact only a small minority of people today would have their lives immediately impacted by the War on Terror, making his claim that 9/11 has greatly increased people's fears, which on a practical level seems untrue and where there may be evidence it could be attributed to so many factors, it would be very difficult to prove conclusively that a terror attack which killed .00001% of the population could have that stark of an impact compared to the diseases, territorial disputes, and general violence that plagued our fore fathers for countless generations before us. Overall, his lack of experience and understanding led me to call into question the rest of his book, but I since I have nothing to go by, I will take this all at face value.
Finally, he added too many political points and tried to make too many jokes to seem truly professional. Scientists need only present the facts, and while the jokes may make it more entertaining, too many of his jokes seemed like inside, personal jokes that I didn't get to improve the enjoyment of this book. Making political points may seem salient, to me, it just blurs the line between rationality and emotionality, making me question once again, if the author was truly being objective in his study or was just collecting only the data that helped him make his point, and I pointed out in the paragraph above, where I did have background, some of this seemed suspicious.
So while I feel like I got a better understanding of the human genome, I can't really give this more than an average rating.
danaleanne's review against another edition
1.0
I was so bored! I only made it about 20% through before giving up, maybe the rest of the book would have gotten better, but I have lots of other things I'd rather read than attempting to get any farther in this one. It's not because I didn't understand the subject matter. I took quite a few genetics classes while getting my biology degree, and this book made a topic that used to interest me so dry. Oh well, at least I didn't pay for it.
will_sargent's review
3.0
It's a fun read, but doesn't tell you anything that you won't already know if you've read Genome.
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