Gave up...too heavy

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


I'll have to note this down as a DNF. It was an awfully good book, but at over 400 pages (400 BIG pages), I grew discouraged and took it back to the library. I caught myself skimming, and that was no way to treat such an enlightening, interesting book.

If he'd edited out about one-third of the chapters, I'd have finished it. Because the stuff I read--really read--was fascinating. I read about how heredity was "discovered"; how human intelligence testing resulted in the institutionalizing and sometimes sterilization of people whose main issue was poverty; and then a whole bunch of information about mitochrondial DNA and bacterial that finds its way into our body, is passed down from mother to child (or even father to child in cases), and either enhances our life, preserves it, or occasionally destroys it.

All great stuff, and a valid course material for a graduate degree study. But too much for lazy old me!