January’s Book Club reading, The Gene, by the Pulitzer Prize-winning author Siddhartha Mukherjee, drives home in this lucid and intimate book about the profound relevance of the history and future of biology in our lives.

Summary from the author’s website:

“THE GENE: An Intimate History . . . is the story of the quest to decipher the master-code of instructions that makes and defines humans, that governs our form, function, and fate and determines the future of our children . . . a magnificent history of the gene and a response to the defining question of the future: What becomes of being human when we learn to “read” and “write” our own genetic information? . . . Throughout the narrative, the story of Mukherjee’s own family—with its tragic and bewildering history of mental illness—cuts like a bright, red line, reminding us of the many questions that hang over our ability to translate the science of genetics from the laboratory to the real world. . . In superb prose and with an instinct for the dramatic scene, he describes the centuries of research and experimentation—from Aristotle and Pythagoras to Mendel and Darwin, from Boveri and Morgan to Crick, Watson and Franklin, all the way through the revolutionary twenty-first century innovators who mapped the human genome.”

Date: Sunday, January  28
Time: 7 p.m. – 8 p.m.
Venue: Online meeting; details emailed with registration confirmation
Cost: Free (donations appreciated

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