Being Me: What It Means to Be Human

Christine Whipp always knew there was something wrong about the way she fitted in - or rather, didn't fit in - with her family. Finally, when she was 41, her mother told her the reason: she had been conceived by donor insemination. Since then, Christine has tried to find out who her biological father was. "I want to know where I belong", she says.Our relatedness is part of who we are; part of what makes us human. In this very readable book, Pete Moore writes popular medicine, science and philosophy as they should be written: through individual lives. He deals with nine different aspects of what it means to be a person - the embodied, conscious, genetic, historical, related, material, spiritual, sexual and social - by telling the stories of people who are extreme examples of each.Moore muses about these facets of our humanity in the light of current theories. He concludes that "being me" doesn't lie in any particular aspect. Just as the imact of a painting does not depend on any one brush stroke, but emerges indefinably from them all, so our humanity is more complex than any breakdown of this type can pinpoint. I would have liked a chapter on memory, which seems to me one of the crucial elements of our human mix. Even without it, however, this book is an intelligent and warm-hearted exploration of the human condition.

Moore does away with the complex academic language and instead uses great stories of real people's lives to give insights into what it means to be human. It has depth, humor and content - I couldn't put it down.