How DNA and History Shape Our Identities and Our Futures
by Christine Kenneally
Critics' Opinion:
Readers' rating:
Published Oct 2014
368 pages
Genre: Science, Health and the Environment
Publication Information
We are doomed to repeat history if we fail to learn from it, but how are we affected by the forces that are invisible to us? In The Invisible History of the Human Race
Christine Kenneally draws on cutting-edge research to reveal how both historical artifacts and DNA tell us where we come from and where we may be going. While some books explore our genetic inheritance and popular television shows celebrate ancestry, this is the first book to explore how everything from DNA to emotions to names and the stories that form our lives are all part of our human legacy. Kenneally shows how trust is inherited in Africa, silence is passed down in Tasmania, and how the history of nations is written in our DNA. From fateful, ancient encounters to modern mass migrations and medical diagnoses, Kenneally explains how the forces that shaped the history of the world ultimately shape each human who inhabits it.
The Invisible History of the Human Race is a deeply researched, carefully crafted and provocative perspective on how our stories, psychology, and genetics affect our past and our future.
"Starred Review. Kenneally offers a rich, thoughtful blend of science, social science, and philosophy in a manner that mixes personal history with the history of the human species." - Publishers Weekly
"A lively, informative mix of genealogy and genetics." - Kirkus
"Transcending the nature-nurture dichotomy, Kenneally shows us how our societies and our selves got to be the way they are. Don't read this book looking for neat answers - gaze instead through a glorious kaleidoscope of science, psychology, history, and first-class storytelling." - Susan Cain, New York Times bestselling author of Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can't Stop Talking
"This wholly original book will change how you view your parents, your children, and your own messy, mosaic self." - Amanda Schaffer, contributor to the New Yorker online and contributing editor at MIT Technology Review
"Christine Kenneally vividly traces the astonishing 21st century progress in the science of who we are. And she never loses sight of the human stories we tell about our heredity and history, which constitute us just as much as bits and genes do." - Jordan Ellenberg, professor of mathematics at the University of Wisconsin, author of How Not To Be Wrong: The Power of Mathematical Thinking
"Crisply written and packed with myriad fresh facts and rights, The Invisible History will make the journey down the genealogical trail a lot richer and more meaningful." - Sylvia Nasar, author of Grand Pursuit: The Story of Economic Genius
"Magnificently rich and sweeping in scope, in impeccable yet intimate prose." - Cordelia Fine, ARC Future Fellow in Psychological Sciences and Associate Professor at the University of Melbourne, author of Delusions of Gender: How Our Minds, Society, and Neurosexism Create Difference
"What a remarkable tour of the thousands of ways the past shapes who we are… By the end, you'll have changed the way you think about identity, your name, and all those double helixes in your cells." - AJ Jacobs, Author of The Year of Living Biblically and organizer of the Global Family Reunion
This information about The Invisible History of the Human Race was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Christine Kenneally is an award-winning journalist and author who has written for The New Yorker, The New York Times, Slate, Time magazine, New Scientist, The Monthly, and other publications. She is the author of The First Word: The Search for the Origins of Language, which was a finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Award. She was born and raised in Melbourne, Australia, and lives in New York City.
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