A readable, provocative look at biological tinkering that will doubtless shape the future, whether we like it or not.
Lucid study of recent efforts to alter the human gene to end hereditary diseases, a project fraught with ethical and medical implications.
Kirksey, an anthropologist who is often called upon to speak to humanistic, rather than strictly biological, views of human nature, explores a most human problem: the use of the new CRISPR technology to alter genes to remove undesirable features. “CRISPR is an enzyme that produces targeted mutagenesis,” he writes. “In other words, CRISPR generates mutants.” These mutants are not yet at the level of the famed X-Men, though they touch on a point in common. As Kirksey observes, the X-Men series “was created by two American Jewish men in 1963 as a parable about civil rights.” And what of the civil rights of the gene-edited babies produced recently in a Chinese laboratory? They have been carefully hidden away, for “the families desperately wanted to protect the identity of their children to prevent discriminatory treatment by society.” Kirksey’s primary narrative follows Jiankui He, the Chinese scientist responsible for the in vitro gene-edited procedure that produced a set of twins. Dr. He, a brilliant man who raised himself out of poverty through sheer effort, may have started with the best of intentions, but the gene-editing enterprise quickly became a profit center snapped up by excited corporations. Editing, writes the author, may not be the best metaphor: “CRISPR is more like a tiny Reaper drone that can produce targeted damage to DNA,” sometimes hitting precisely and sometimes inadvertently destroying good cells on either side. Whatever the case, scientists are already looking at eliminating existing mutations, “from primordial dwarfism to obscure conditions like CAMRQ (cerebellar ataxia, intellectual disability, and dysequilibrium syndrome),” a business without visible end and, of course, available first to those with the greatest financial resources.
A readable, provocative look at biological tinkering that will doubtless shape the future, whether we like it or not.Pub Date: Nov. 10, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-250-26535-7
Page Count: 304
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: Sept. 28, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2020
A pleasure for fans of old-school historical narratives.
Avuncular observations on matters historical from the late popularizer of the past.
McCullough made a fine career of storytelling his way through past events and the great men (and occasional woman) of long-ago American history. In that regard, to say nothing of his eschewing modern technology in favor of the typewriter (“I love the way the bell rings every time I swing the carriage lever”), he might be thought of as belonging to a past age himself. In this set of occasional pieces, including various speeches and genial essays on what to read and how to write, he strikes a strong tone as an old-fashioned moralist: “Indifference to history isn’t just ignorant, it’s rude,” he thunders. “It’s a form of ingratitude.” There are some charming reminiscences in here. One concerns cajoling his way into a meeting with Arthur Schlesinger in order to pitch a speech to presidential candidate John F. Kennedy: Where Richard Nixon “has no character and no convictions,” he opined, Kennedy “is appealing to our best instincts.” McCullough allows that it wasn’t the strongest of ideas, but Schlesinger told him to write up a speech anyway, and when it got to Kennedy, “he gave a speech in which there was one paragraph that had once sentence written by me.” Some of McCullough’s appreciations here are of writers who are not much read these days, such as Herman Wouk and Paul Horgan; a long piece concerns a president who’s been largely lost in the shuffle too, Harry Truman, whose decision to drop the atomic bomb on Japan McCullough defends. At his best here, McCullough uses history as a way to orient thinking about the present, and with luck to good ends: “I am a short-range pessimist and a long-range optimist. I sincerely believe that we may be on the way to a very different and far better time.”
A pleasure for fans of old-school historical narratives.Pub Date: Sept. 16, 2025
ISBN: 9781668098998
Page Count: 208
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: June 26, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2025
SEEN & HEARD
A virtuoso performance and an ode to an undervalued medium created by two talented artists.
The veteran actor, comedian, and banjo player teams up with the acclaimed illustrator to create a unique book of cartoons that communicates their personalities.
Martin, also a prolific author, has always been intrigued by the cartoons strewn throughout the pages of the New Yorker. So when he was presented with the opportunity to work with Bliss, who has been a staff cartoonist at the magazine since 1997, he seized the moment. “The idea of a one-panel image with or without a caption mystified me,” he writes. “I felt like, yeah, sometimes I’m funny, but there are these other weird freaks who are actually funny.” Once the duo agreed to work together, they established their creative process, which consisted of working forward and backward: “Forwards was me conceiving of several cartoon images and captions, and Harry would select his favorites; backwards was Harry sending me sketched or fully drawn cartoons for dialogue or banners.” Sometimes, he writes, “the perfect joke occurs two seconds before deadline.” There are several cartoons depicting this method, including a humorous multipanel piece highlighting their first meeting called “They Meet,” in which Martin thinks to himself, “He’ll never be able to translate my delicate and finely honed droll notions.” In the next panel, Bliss thinks, “I’m sure he won’t understand that the comic art form is way more subtle than his blunt-force humor.” The team collaborated for a year and created 150 cartoons featuring an array of topics, “from dogs and cats to outer space and art museums.” A witty creation of a bovine family sitting down to a gourmet meal and one of Dumbo getting his comeuppance highlight the duo’s comedic talent. What also makes this project successful is the team’s keen understanding of human behavior as viewed through their unconventional comedic minds.
A virtuoso performance and an ode to an undervalued medium created by two talented artists.Pub Date: Nov. 17, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-250-26289-9
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Celadon Books
Review Posted Online: Aug. 30, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2020
PERSPECTIVES
© Copyright 2025 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
