She Has Her Mother's Laugh: The Powers, Perversions, and Potential of Heredity

"Carl Zimmer’s one of a handful of extremely good science writers, one of those people who are capable of taking an immensely complex subject and, without being patronising, without talking down to the reader in any way at all, presenting a very complex argument with a lot of different material in a way that’s both incredibly clear and uncompromising in its detail and its depth. It is about heredity: how heredity changes, how complex it is, about nature versus nurture. It is just a completely fascinating, up-to-date book about that kind of science. Do you know, I found it such a refreshing exercise, to be made to read at this speed, books of this length. It makes you realise quite what a miracle the book is. It is absolutely extraordinary how many people set out to write a book, because they just can’t not write it. It becomes a lifetime’s obsession, which is what the best writing is for a period of time that you’re totally immersed in the project. The result is some quite extraordinary work, work that is structurally interesting, from a research point of view completely new, in terms of taking incredibly complex material and making it readable. It’s one of the best ways of trying to understand the mad, crazy world that we live in. I’d say nonfiction is in very good shape in 2018."