Author: Cori Vanchieri / Source: Science News
She Has Her Mother’s Laugh
Carl Zimmer
Dutton, $30
The Elephant Man, novelist Pearl S.
Buck and Phoebus, god of the sun, all find their way into science writer Carl Zimmer’s latest book. In She Has Her Mother’s Laugh, Zimmer uses famous moments in history — and Greek mythology — to explain genetics and how researchers have come to understand heredity and try to manipulate it.Zimmer walks through centuries of exploration, settling into stories of scientists who tried to use simplistic notions of heredity to improve the human race. While investigating inheritance, Francis Galton, who coined the term “eugenics,” noticed that notable men had notable sons. He suggested in 1865 that England’s well-being depended on a national breeding program to produce more talented people. His hereditary utopia would make a terrifying episode of TV’s Black Mirror. Galton’s work launched later efforts in the United States to erase undesirable characteristics through sterilization laws and mental capacity checks of immigrants. Eugenics also fed the Nazis’ notion of a superior race….
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