I am cleaning out my bookshelves and storage room!
Only the items that are new, like-new, and acceptable conditions are sold. The
rest will be given away for free.
Many items that I can ship will be listed on Amazon(dot)com and other community
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If you are a bio student or interested in nature, DNA, cloning, and related
issues, this is the book for you!
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TITLE OF THE BOOK:
It Ain't Necessarily So : The Dream of the Human Genome and Other Illusions
Author: Richard Lewontin
Binding: Hardcover
Publisher: New York Review of Books (February 2000)
Condition: New. In loose wrap.
ASIN/ISBN: 0940322102
330 pages
Dimensions: 9.1 x 5.6 x 1.3 inches
Weight: 1.25 pounds
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Asking Price: $9.99
Compre with the market price: $24.95
Payment:
- Cash or money order preferred.
- PayPal or credit cards can be taken with additional $1 to cover a portion
of the cost.
- If using Amazon.com, Amazon payment method is accepted at no additional charge.
S&H:
- No S&H if you pick up. (Mostly in San Fernando Valley or Thousand Oaks
but can be arranged for other areas too)
- Add $2.15 to ship within USA or $15.50 for international shipping
Shipping method: USPS
They reserve 4-6 weeks for delivery, but I've seen my items delivered in 1 weeks
to Europe and Asia too.
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Book Description
Biology makes the headlines practically every few weeks as geneticists claim
they have accounted for yet another human trait or ailment. However out of complex
research have come exaggerations and misunderstandings about what biology, especially
genetics can tell us. In this collection of essays from The New York Review
of Books, Lewontin demystifies some of the most controversial issues in the
life sciences today. On topics ranging from Darwin to Dolly the sheep, including
genetic determinism, heredity and natural selection, evolutionary psychology
and altruism, sex surveys, cloning and the Human Genome project, he offers both
sharp criticisms of the "overweening pride" of scientists and lucid
expositions of the exact state of scientific knowledge. In each case he casts
an ever-vigilant and deflationary eye on the temptation to overstate the power
of biology to explain everything we want to know about ourselves.
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About the Author
Richard Lewontin is a leading geneticist and the author of Biology as Ideology:
The Doctrine of DNA and The Genetic Basis of Evolutionary Change and co-author
of The Dialectical Biologist (with Richard Levins) and Not in Our Genes (with
Steven Rose and Leon Kamin). He is Professor of Population Sciences and the
Alexander Agassiz Professor of Zoology and Professor of Biology at Harvard University.
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EDITORIAL REVIEW
*** From Amazon(dot)com
Stephen Jay Gould calls Richard Lewontin "simply the smartest man I have
ever met." And not the least opinionated, either. Lewontin has long been
famous among biologists for a volatile combination of feisty leftism, scientific
insight, and verbal skill, which have been displayed for the more general public
in his essays for what has been called The New York Review of Each Other's Books.
It Ain't Necessarily So is a collection of some of his more characteristic
reviews from the 1980s and 1990s. The Mismeasure of Man, by Stephen Jay Gould;
Unto Others: The Evolution and Psychology of Unselfish Behavior, by Elliott
Sober and David Sloan Wilson; sociological studies of Sex in America; and Ruth
Hubbard's books on gender in science: all his essays are informative yet lively,
with a high acid content--as when he begins his piece on the Human Genome Project
with a definition of "fetish."
Lewontin's prose is worth reading in itself, but what lifts this anthology
to another level is that it also includes replies and rebuttals selected from
the New York Review's letters column--a forum that doubles as the intellectual's
World Wrestling Federation. For the older pieces, he also includes updates,
"where are they now" summaries to give a sense of historical change
in each field. Assertive, brilliant, sarcastic, dense, wide-ranging--Lewontin
may be challenging, but he is never dull. --Mary Ellen Curtin
*** From Publishers Weekly
Harvard biologist Lewontin is highly skeptical of the human genome project supporters'
claims that complete knowledge of the human organism and effective gene therapies
are just around the corner. His forceful critique of this multimillion-dollar
gene-mapping project points out that our DNA is infinitely complex, and that
mutations in genes are not the cause of, say, cancer, although they may be one
of many predisposing conditions. In a bracing, lucid collection of essays, all
originally published in the New York Review of Books, Lewontin makes bold forays
into such fields as evolutionary theory, IQ testing, criminology, artificial
intelligence, neurobiology and gender differences, exposing sloppy thinking
and fallacies on all fronts. Scrutinizing "the development of modern biology
from Darwin to Dolly" (a reference to the sheep cloned in 1997), Lewontin
lambastes Clinton's National Bioethics Advisory Commission, charging that its
report on the possibility of human cloning sidestepped fundamental ethical,
religious and political issues. Lewontin is a formidable critic of simplistic,
flawed biological determinism, which he sees at work in studies of identical
twins reared apart; in feminist biologists' claim that females are the smarter,
gentler, more humane sex; in sociobiologist E.O. Wilson's belief that the sexual
division of power flows directly from innate differences between men and women;
and in biologist Richard Dawkins's argument for the primacy of genes over the
social environment. Several of these rigorous essays include an exchange of
letters between Lewontin and his critics, making this an illuminating forum
of ideas. (May)
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.
*** The New York Times Book Review, Christine Kenneally
Though challenging for the layman, his book will reward persistent readers with
a better understanding of the most controversial scientific issues of our day.
*** From Kirkus Reviews
This wide-ranging collection of provocative essay-reviews from The New York
Review of Books focuses on the biological sciences. Lewontin (Agassiz Prof.
of Biology/Harvard) finds himself at odds with some fashionable orthodoxies
of modern biology. In particular, he is skeptical of the determinist streak
evident in many proponents of genetics. In a brief introduction he sets the
context. As he sees it, part of the problem originates with the migration into
biology of physicists and chemists in the 1950s, thrusting molecular biology
into the center of public attention. Congress may be unwilling to fund the supercollider,
but it did not blanch at funding the Human Genome Project, touted as the cure-all
for myriad ills. Lewontin points out that, despite the geneticists' hype, in
many cases the genetic expression of a congenital disease is not confined to
a unique sequence of DNA. Moreover, identifying the genetic cause does not necessarily
produce a cure. Lewontin's historical observations are also useful. For instance,
while Darwin's formulation of natural selection as the driving force of evolution
is not open to serious challenge, the pat notion of species often conveniently
overlooks the considerable degree of variation within a species. As one would
expect from an NYRB reviewer, Lewontin rarely dodges controversyconcerning the
National Bioethics Advisory Commission's report on cloning, he wonders whether
it was at all wise to give religious spokespeople input into a document on scientific
policy. Likewise, he points out the key problem in research on human sexuality:
whether the subjects can be trusted to tell the researchers the truth about
their practices. The book's exploration of these and other issues is given additional
depth by the inclusion of exchanges between Lewontin and some of the subjects
of the reviews. Well-written, insightful, and a useful reminder of the complex
issues still unsolved in the biological sciences. -- Copyright ©2000, Kirkus
Associates, LP. All rights reserved. |