The Violinist's Thumb by Sam Kean

Subtitled and other lost tales of Love, War, and Genius, as written by our genetic code Kean in his most recent book has done the same for DNA and Biology that he did earlier for the Periodic Table in The Disappearing Spoon.

As a former struggling Biology, Chemistry, well any Science really, student, I now have developed an interest to understand all of the things that I missed the first time through.

Kean does a thoroughly fantastic job in this book bringing his subjects to life. The Violinist's Thumb focuses on DNA and Genetics and as per usual for me and Kean books I found myself cornering my wife and family members with bits of information that I had gleaned from the book.

Of course the material, even lightened in Kean's special way, is still muddy. My brain does not attach to the material as well as it does, say, batting averages, but I am happy to say that it does with effort compute.

The first section of the book focuses on the passing of DNA and traits, both the processes, and the history of their discoveries. As a person with a genetic condition, a recessive one at that, which proves my unluckiness in the genetic lottery, I found the process of how these traits are passed down interesting and informative. It is not all dry material either. No one really wants to know this but we still learn how our in our ancient microbial past we ingested a bug, yes a bug, and that bug ingestion led to a division of labor inside of us that mirrors photosynthesis in plants.

We learn about human evolutionary bottlenecks, these indicate times when humans nearly went extinct. These bottlenecks are what leads to DNA similarities in races and groups of people. If the population shrinks or is isolated in some way future populations will all have common ancestors.

Clearly Kean's books have a market. They are reviewed and reviewed well by the major publications, and do well in the nonfiction lists. I must not be the only person who finds this subject matter interesting. It should be quite sometime before he runs out of subject matter too. With the physics explosion, and things like the Higgs Bosun news perhaps physics will be next.

One thing is for certain my family will know what to expect when the next book comes out. As my wife told my daughter " just not your head, act interested and say Wow at the appropriate times." Clearly by these comments yes these books have a market but no not everyone is interested. It is just that now, unlike high school, I am on the science nerd's team.