I found this to be an interesting selection. It’s a college student’s dream textbook: full of pictures, witty writing, and one can even learn something from it. It’s the kind of book you can read from cover to cover in one sitting and not be thoroughly sick of it.
The book didn’t really present any material of any great difference from what I had learned in my high school biology class, though it did expand a bit. The one example of this that stands out in my mind is the fact that Mendel’s work on genetics was basically ignored for years, and only later did scientists perform the same experiments as Mendel and found them to be correct, and then they rediscovered his publication.
The book seemed to blend the curious facts with the basic knowledge of genetics, all neatly illustrated. The text followed logically throughout the book, and had I not learned all this in high school, I just might have learned something new from reading this book.
I did appreciate the humor the authors used. It reminds me a lot of the approach used in commercial advertising; using humor to sell a product, or in this case, using humor to teach genetics.
The discussion of genetic engineering was interesting, with the examples of genetic engineering already performed and the questions of the ethics involved in genetic engineering. I believe that we should continue work in the field, to enhance non-human life to better suit us; however I draw the line at genetic testing on humans.