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A review by urlphantomhive
Life at the Speed of Light: From the Double Helix to the Dawn of Digital Life by J. Craig Venter
3.0
Read all my reviews on http://urlphantomhive.booklikes.com
As a master student in Biomedical Sciences I'd heard about J. Craig Ventor (and especially his contributions to sequencing the human genome) multiple times in class. So, when I saw this book coming up I was immediately interested.
I somehow had always thought that he would be able to communicate about his science in a very interesting and understandable way. I don't know why I had this believe, but this book disappointed me a bit on that account. I was looking for a book that would be a nice way to introduce people with little or no knowledge about but a huge interest in molecular biology to the subject, but I don't think this book would be right for them. It's at once - I believe - far too specialistic for laymen and too simplistic for the people who do know about it.
It was however, for me, still interesting as synthetic biology is a subject I haven't really learned a lot about. About halfway I did start to get a bit annoyed as it became more and more of an 'Oh, look at me and my team we're so amazing' story as he sums up all his successes and publications in Science. The last chapters were a bit weird as he jumps from synthetic biology to teleportation. Not as good as I anticipated but still enjoyable for people with some background information on (molecular) biology...
Thanks to the publisher and Netgalley for providing me with a free copy of this book in exchange for an honest review!
As a master student in Biomedical Sciences I'd heard about J. Craig Ventor (and especially his contributions to sequencing the human genome) multiple times in class. So, when I saw this book coming up I was immediately interested.
I somehow had always thought that he would be able to communicate about his science in a very interesting and understandable way. I don't know why I had this believe, but this book disappointed me a bit on that account. I was looking for a book that would be a nice way to introduce people with little or no knowledge about but a huge interest in molecular biology to the subject, but I don't think this book would be right for them. It's at once - I believe - far too specialistic for laymen and too simplistic for the people who do know about it.
It was however, for me, still interesting as synthetic biology is a subject I haven't really learned a lot about. About halfway I did start to get a bit annoyed as it became more and more of an 'Oh, look at me and my team we're so amazing' story as he sums up all his successes and publications in Science. The last chapters were a bit weird as he jumps from synthetic biology to teleportation. Not as good as I anticipated but still enjoyable for people with some background information on (molecular) biology...
Thanks to the publisher and Netgalley for providing me with a free copy of this book in exchange for an honest review!