Masterminds: Genius, DNA, and the Quest to Rewrite Life

If you're at all intrigued by biotechnology (and you should be--it'll change our world more profoundly than electronics did), you can't do better than to pick up this book as an engaging, compulsively readible introduction to the field. Duncan innovatively skips the dry lectures, choosing instead to roll out a series of well-wrought profiles of some of biotechnology's most prominent and influential figures. By keeping the human aspect in the forefront (and these are some colorful characters), Duncan introduces the science, technology and industry of biotech contextually, almost effortlessly. I read this in hardcover, when it sported an unfortunately irrelevant cover and a more unwieldy title (THE GENETICIST WHO PLAYED HOOPS WITH MY DNA). I'm glad to see this book at last packaged in a way that accurately reflects the writing within. MASTERMINDS popularizes without patronizing, remaining true to both its subject and its audience. Not many general-interest science books manage to pull that off.

While I thought I was pretty informed within the American Biotech universe, it seems there is a greater hero. David Duncan is truly an expert on the topic. He introduces the reader to the greatest scientific minds of our age(through interviews) and links them together through the entertaining device of his own personal encounters with them. The book is truly informative but is also compelling as a narrative. Interestingly also, David Duncan is the co-host of NPR's radio show, Biotech Nation, although that bit of information doesn't seem to be mentioned in any of the coverage here. I do find it tragic, however, that since the hard back book carries a completely different title than the softback, the rave reviews of the hardback haven't transferred over to the review commentary of the softback (Masterminds:...). For those of you interested in checking out those rave reviews, look up the following title: The Geneticist Who Played Hoops with My DNA : . . . And Other Masterminds from the Frontiers of Biotech.

I'm not a science person, but I'd been reading so much about DNA in the news in the past few years, I thought I should learn a bit about what was going on. I picked up Masterminds because it was a SF Chronicle Best Book of 2005. Still, i expected to be bored. That's the price you pay for knowledge, right? Wrong! Masterminds kept me entranced right until the last page. By showing us the lives and personalities of eminent scientists, Masterminds gave me a better understanding of the complex questions (and answers) of science, today.