A Brief History of Everyone Who Ever Lived: The Stories in Our Genes in Science and Inquiry

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A Brief History of Everyone Who Ever Lived: The Stories in Our Genes

Adam Rutherford

Start date: July 1, 2020

Finish date: July 31, 2020

Discussion: Book Club 2020

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Book Club 2020

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What Members Thought

Jul 12, 2020 David Rubenstein rated it really liked it

Shelves: science, nonfiction, audiobook, biology

This is an entertaining book about what genetics tells us about ourselves, and what it does not tell. For example, genetics tells us that a certain small percentage of our genes comes from Neanderthals. It cannot tell us if you descended from a particular tribe of Native Americans. DNA analyses tell us about tendencies, but does not tell you that you are violent, or prone to Alzheimer's disease, or what "race" you belong to. In fact, genetics cannot distinguish among races--it is a social classi ...more

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Jul 15, 2020 Jim rated it liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: science, 1audio, 2non-fiction

A lot of interesting information, but a bit of a slog due to repetition. He's covering a huge swath of time & geography. That's difficult & he managed to break it up fairly well as is shown in the table of contents below. It is a credible effort, but it had problems throughout. Well narrated & I can cautiously recommend reading this, but I've certainly read better books on genes & human history. 3.5 stars rounded down because his bias is just too obvious.

He bent the facts to fit his agenda a bit A lot of interesting information, but a bit of a slog due to repetition. He's covering a huge swath of time & geography. That's difficult & he managed to break it up fairly well as is shown in the table of contents below. It is a credible effort, but it had problems throughout. Well narrated & I can cautiously recommend reading this, but I've certainly read better books on genes & human history. 3.5 stars rounded down because his bias is just too obvious.

He bent the facts to fit his agenda a bit too often. He makes a big deal out of the math which shows that the genetic variance within a race is greater than between races however they're defined. (I had no idea there were so many!) He points out how much harm these ideas have caused in great detail (Agreed!) & he takes Nicholas Wade to task generally for his ideas in this area, but never meets any of them head on & avoids how often they work well in real life. For instance, he never pointed out just how the 3 major race idea works in a field like forensics (bodies are often identified by race due to bone structure differences) & medical treatments/issues since that would have undercut his argument badly.

His discussion of Darwin's cousin is another example of pretty good with gaping holes. Galton was a 'great' man, both for good & ill, which Rutherford makes clear. He mentions Roosevelt, Churchill, & , but didn't mention Margaret Sanger or (Bronx Zoo, Bison Society, & a couple of parks). Perhaps that's because he's from the UK, but he also ignored the role Galton's eugenics ideas had in forming the modern conservation & ecological movements. Sanger's efforts led to Planned Parenthood while Grant's book went on to become Hitler's bible. , the father of the modern ecology movement & a director of PP, coupled Galton's ideas with those of Malthus. Maybe all that would have been too much of a tangle, but I find it fascinating how such great ideas & intentions went so right & wrong. He could & should have found room for this, but he spent too much time repetitiously hammering his point home.

That last sentence pretty much sums up the book: good points that are repetitiously hammered into the reader at the expense of full exploration of the topic. He obviously knows his field & his explanations into just how complex & far reaching minor genetic changes can be are excellent, but his focused PC bias is tough to take at times.

Table of Contents
Introduction
PART ONE: HOW WE CAME TO BE
1: Horny and mobile
2: The first European union
3: When we were kings
i: The king lives on
ii: Richard III, Act VI
iii: The king is dead聽.聽.聽.
PART TWO: WHO WE ARE NOW
4: The end of race
5: The most wondrous map ever produced by humankind
6: Fate
7: A short introduction to the future of humankind
Epilogue ...more

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Oct 21, 2018 Mag rated it it was amazing

Shelves: science, favourite

Utterly fascinating. Very well written and witty to boot. 5+

7 likes · Like · see review

Nov 02, 2018 Charlene rated it liked it

Shelves: general-science

Some aspects of this book were great, such as Rutherfords attack on the paleo diet, attack on the pseudoscience of racism, and his explanation that genetic ancestry tests can only tell you who you are related to based on where they are *now.* I could be mistaken, but I am pretty sure it was Rutherford who taught me that my 23 and me test was not based on anything in the past but rather based on where the people who share my genes are currently located. The idea is that you can certainly learn ab ...more

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Aug 12, 2017 Bel rated it really liked it

Shelves: non-fiction, history, science, bought-on-kindle

Genes change culture, culture changes genes.

This is a fantastic story of what genetics has told us in the past 15 years and what it hasn't. On the one hand it is full of completely surprising assertions. That everyone with European blood is descended from Charlemagne was my favourite (and that wasn't even shown by genetics, but by maths), or how much we were ourselves changed by the development of agriculture. On the other hand, it admirably makes clear the lack of clarity in the vast mass of th Genes change culture, culture changes genes.

This is a fantastic story of what genetics has told us in the past 15 years and what it hasn't. On the one hand it is full of completely surprising assertions. That everyone with European blood is descended from Charlemagne was my favourite (and that wasn't even shown by genetics, but by maths), or how much we were ourselves changed by the development of agriculture. On the other hand, it admirably makes clear the lack of clarity in the vast mass of the human genome and its coding for a massive, fiendishly complicated organism. The Rumsfeld quote about 'known unknowns' was deployed to good use on this, as was an honest explanation of the nature of science (and the meaning of the word 'theory'), which should be repeated as often as possible to the general public.

There are also some occasionally beautiful turns of phrase, such as talking about the common ancestor of western Europeans and East Asians representing "the people who had migrated up from Africa before one group, over thousands of years, turned towards the dawn, while the other one went into the sunset." I enjoyed the literary references too. So it goes.

I was surprised to see somewhat critical reviews on here about the author's treatment of race as I thought this was deal with in pretty short order. He contrasts the small number of superficial differences that we associate with race with the myriad other differences that are hidden beneath and, most movingly, explains just how recently differences like skin tone, hair type and eye folds have turned up, and how much everything else is muddled together:

"The truth is that we all are a bit of everything, and we come from all over. Even if you live in the most remote parts of the Hebrides, or the edge of the Greek Aegean, we share an ancestor only a few hundred years ago. A thousand years ago, we Europeans share all of our ancestry. Triple that time and we share all our ancestry with everyone on Earth. We are all cousins, of some degree. I find this pleasing, a warm light for all mankind to share. Our DNA threads through all of us."

It's strangely British-centric in its references, humour and sarcasm. That's fine by me, but an odd choice as it might put off other readers. I will always critique a book that is parochially US-centric, so it seems fair to mention this here also. There was also some more complicated sentences that were clunky and needed editing, which is a shame. Finally, a completly egregious assumption that the reader was of European descent was unnecessary and shouldn't have made it in. Sure, he acknowledged it wasn't a certainty, but it is a certainty some of your readers aren't, so why exclude them?

Overall this is an excellent pop science book. I enjoyed it very much with my grounding in biochemistry, because it started with what I knew and then detailed some incredible work that has vastly developed our understanding even in the near 15 years since I left university. I don't think you need to have any understanding of genetics to enjoy it though - as long as you can tolerate the old language-based metaphor. ...more

3 likes · Like · see review

Sep 02, 2018 Mitchell Friedman rated it liked it

Shelves: science, library, nonfiction, published-2016

That was a long read. Definitely an inconsistent book. Some of the later chapters were quite slow. But through most of the book, the books was just easy to put down. And the author clearly is a clever writer though not as clever as he thinks he is. He makes choices seemingly to be cute or funny or profane. Mostly what I want is clear simple and straightforward. I did learn stuff in this one, and refreshed what I had previously learned. Certainly there were facts that will continue to turn wrong, ...more

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