书名：The Gene 基因传
作者：Siddhartha Mukherjee
出版社名称：Vintage
出版时间：2017
语种：英文
ISBN：9780099584575
商品尺寸：12.9 x 3.1 x 19.8 cm
包装：平装
页数：608
读The Gene《基因传》的10个理由：
1.不是所有写基因的书你都能读得懂，穆克吉写的这本除外。

2.这本书所讲的故事，和每个活生生的人都息息相关，你所有关于病理、行为、性格、疾病、种族、身份、命运的问题，都会在书中找到新的答案。

3.你是谁？从哪里来？到哪里去？基因的发现，让我们终于无限接近这些大问题的真实答案。

4.这本书写了3000年来人类对生命遗传迭代奥秘的探索。

5.为什么人人相似却又千差万别？生命的演化过程里，是什么在背后决定着这一切？这个问题困扰人类几千年，从亚里士多德到达尔文，人类始终探索。直到20世纪50年代，科学家找到了基因，终于找到了破解生命奥秘的钥匙。

6.基因是没有情感的，《基因传》是有温度的。整本书写了240位科学家们在探究基因奥秘的过程中攻坚克难的故事。

7.之前写基因的书也不少，但都零零散散的，从来没有像穆克吉这样完整系统地梳理基因理论的起源、发展和未来，《基因传》是一部知识密度极高的佳作。

8.这不是生硬的科普书，作者同时把政治、历史、人性、伦理、道德等议题穿插在里边，是一部有厚度的作品。这本书可以让我们完整地了解基因的全部知识，关于基因，看这本就够了。

9.印度裔美国医生，这样的身份，让作者的写作别具一格。穆克吉的前一部作品《众病之王：癌症传》获得普利策奖，他是个非常会讲故事的人。

10.穆克吉很帅，嗯！

媒体评论：
“没有人比他更适合带领我们穿越基因科学的过去、现在和未来……同时，穆克吉还是一个优雅的、会讲故事的人。”——比尔•盖茨

“《基因传》不仅描绘了生命科学发展的壮美蓝图，同时也对传统人类概念提出了道德与哲学挑战。”——保罗•伯格（诺贝尔化学奖得主）

“这部在现代格局下激进而又具有争议性且有亲和力的著作，是如此的扣人心弦。阅读它，装备好自己，来迎接未来的到来。”
——布莱恩•艾波雅（《如何长生不老》作者），《周日泰晤士报》

“他（穆克吉）对（基因的）历史脉络的厘清、引人入胜的讲述，是他雄心壮志的彰显，也是其不容磨灭的成就的见证。值得一提的是，他的书中没有落下任何一个可信的、生动的调查。”——《卫报》

“这是一部囊括了复杂思想的巨作……中文写作细致，可读性和趣味性都很强，可以说是所有科学革命中重要的作品之一。它注定会对我们的下一代产生根本性的影响。”
——《观察者》

“《基因传》探讨了一个永恒而复杂的主题。实际上，它与我们每天的生活交织在一起，作者让它与我们更加接近，更加扣人心弦。”——马克•海登（《深夜小狗的神秘习题》作者）

Selected as a Book of the Year by The New York Times, The Economist, Independent, Observer and Mail on Sunday
THE NEW YORK TIMES NUMBER ONE BESTSELLER
SHORTLISTED FOR THE WELLCOME BOOK PRIZE 2017
The Gene is the story of one of the most powerful and dangerous ideas in our history, from bestselling, prize-winning author Siddhartha Mukherjee.
Spanning the globe and several centuries, The Gene is the story of the quest to decipher the master-code that makes and defines humans, that governs our form and function.
This is an epic, moving history of a scientific idea coming to life, by the author of The Emperor of All Maladies. But woven through The Gene, like a red line, is also an intimate history – the story of Mukherjee’s own family and its recurring pattern of mental illness, reminding us that genetics is vitally relevant to everyday lives. These concerns reverberate even more urgently today as we learn to “read” and “write” the human genome – unleashing the potential to change the fates and identities of our children.
The story of the gene begins in an obscure Augustinian abbey in Moravia in 1856 where a monk stumbles on the idea of a ‘unit of heredity’. It intersects with Darwin’s theory of evolution, and collides with the horrors of Nazi eugenics in the 1940s. The gene transforms post-war biology. It reorganizes our understanding of sexuality, temperament, choice and free will. This is a story driven by human ingenuity and obsessive minds – from Charles Darwin and Gregor Mendel to Francis Crick, James Watson and Rosalind Franklin, and the thousands of scientists still working to understand the code of codes.
Majestic in its ambition, and unflinching in its honesty, The Gene gives us a definitive account of the fundamental unit of heredity – and a vision of both humanity’s past and future.

Review
"With a marriage of architectural precision and luscious narrative, an eye for both the paradoxical detail and the unsettling irony, and a genius for locating the emotional truths buried in chemical abstractions, Mukherjee leaves you feeling as though you’ve just aced a college course for which you’d been afraid to register ― and enjoyed every minute of it"
(Andrew Solomon Washington Post)

"[Siddhartha Mukherjee] is the perfect person to guide us through the past, present, and future of genome science… It is up to all of us―not just scientists, government officials, and people fortunate enough to lead foundations―to think hard about these new technologies and how they should and should not be used. Reading The Gene will get you the point where you can actively engage in that debate."(Bill Gates Gatesnotes)

"The Gene is prodigious, sweeping, and ultimately transcendent. If you’re interested in what it means to be human, today and in the tomorrows to come, you must read this book."
(Anthony Doerr, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of All the Light We Cannot See)

"Dramatic and precise... [A] thrilling and comprehensive account of what seems certain to be the most radical, controversial and, to borrow from the subtitle, intimate science of our time... He is a natural storyteller... A page-turner... Read this book and steel yourself for what comes next." (Bryan Appleyard Sunday Times)

"The story […] has been told, piecemeal, in different ways, but never before with the scope and grandeur that Siddhartha Mukherjee brings to his new history, The Gene. He fully justifies the claim that it is “one of the most powerful and dangerous ideas in the history of science.” … Definitive"(James Gleick New York Times Book Review)
在整个20世纪，有三项颠覆性的科学概念和技术应用把人类社会引领到新的历史阶段：“原子”的发现带来物理学的革命，“字节”的发现带来互联网的革命，“基因”的发现带来生物学的革命。

基因既是遗传物质的基本单位，也是一切生物信息的基础，破解了基因的运行机制，也就破解了生命的奥秘，人类的病理、行为、性格、疾病、种族、身份、命运也就有了更新的答案。如今，基因测序、基因克隆等基因技术迅速发展，人类基因组计划也完成了全部人类基因的比对与测序工作，人类征服基因的时代已经到来。

The Gene《基因传》罕见地完整讲述了基因理论的起源、发展和未来，按照时间顺序和故事情节展开，是一部反映基因发展史的传记。
《基因传》也是一部科学家们在探究基因奥秘的过程中攻坚克难的故事，像侦探小说一样，以科学家们不断遇到的新问题为线索步步深入，既深入浅出地梳理了基因理论的脉络，又真实记录了科学家们的合作与斗争、成功与失败。

《基因传》也讲述了基因理论被政治歪曲利用导致的历史灾难和教训，以及基因技术与制度、文化、伦理、道德的冲撞和博弈。有精彩故事，有人性纠葛，有历史进退，《基因传》是一部有温度的、叙事高超的科普通识读物。

人类从来没有像今天这样无限接近生命的真相，当我们能够掌控和改造人类基因时，“人类”的概念也许将从根本上发生改变，后人类时代正在来临。《基因传》所讲的故事，与每个人都息息相关。
悉达多•穆克吉（Siddhartha Mukherjee），印度裔美国医生、肿瘤专家、知名科普作家。
他曾就读于牛津大学，并在斯坦福大学和哈佛大学取得医学博士学位，他还是哥伦比亚大学医学中心助理教授，他的研究主要集中在癌症治疗和与血细胞有关的基因功能上。2010年，他出版著作《众病之王：癌症传》，并于次年荣获普利策文学奖，《时代》杂志称其为“1923年以来有影响力的100本英语书之一”。2016年，《基因传》出版后，成为《纽约时报》畅销书，《华盛顿邮报》、《西雅图时报》年度好书。

Siddhartha Mukherjee is a cancer physician and researcher. He is an assistant professor of medicine at Columbia University and a staff cancer physician at the CU/NYU Presbytarian Hospital. A former Rhodes scholar, he graduated from Stanford University, University of Oxford (where he received a PhD studying cancer-causing viruses) and from Harvard Medical School. His work was nominated for Best American Science Writing, 2000 (edited by James Gleick). He lives in Boston and New York with his wife, Sarah Sze, an artist, and with his daughter, Leela.

The monastery was originally a nunnery. The monks of Saint Augustine’s Order had once lived—as they often liked to grouse—in more lavish circumstances in the ample rooms of a large stone abbey on the top of a hill in the heart of the medieval city of Brno (Brno in Czech, Brunn in German). The city had grown around them over four centuries, cascading down the slopes and then sprawling out over the flat landscape of farms and meadowlands below. But the friars had fallen out of favor with Emperor Joseph II in 1783. The midtown real estate was far too valuable to house them, the emperor had decreed bluntly—and the monks were packed off to a crumbling structure at the bottom of the hill in Old Brno, the ignominy of the relocation compounded by the fact that they had been assigned to live in quarters originally designed for women. The halls had the vague animal smell of damp mortar, and the grounds were overgrown with grass, bramble, and weeds. The only perk of this fourteenth century building—as cold as a meat house and as bare as a prison—was a rectangular garden with shade trees, stone steps, and a long alley, where the monks could walk and think in isolation.
The friars made the best of the new accommodations. A library was restored on the second floor. A study room was connected to it and outfitted with pine reading desks, a few lamps, and a growing collection of nearly ten thousand books, including the latest works of natural history, geology, and astronomy (the Augustinians, fortunately, saw no conflict between religion and most science; indeed, they embraced science as yet another testament of the workings of the divine order in the world). A wine cellar was carved out below, and a modest refectory vaulted above it. One-room cells, with the most rudimentary wooden furniture, housed the inhabitants on the second floor.
In October 1843, a young man from Silesia, the son of two peasants, joined the abbey. He was a short man with a serious face, myopic, and tending toward portliness. He professed little interest in the spiritual life— but was intellectually curious, good with his hands, and a natural gardener. The monastery provided him with a home, and a place to read and learn. He was ordained on August 6, 1847. His given name was Johann, but the friars changed it to Gregor Johann Mendel.