Books about Heredity from Amazon.com

Authoritative, thorough, and engaging, Life: The Science of Biology achieves an optimal balance of scholarship and teachability, never losing sight of either the science or the student The first introductory text to present biological concepts through the research that revealed them, Life covers the full range of topics with an integrated experimental focus that flows naturally from the narrative. This approach helps to bring the drama of classic and cutting-edge research to the classroom—but always in the context of reinforcing core ideas and the innovative scientific thinking behind them. Students will experience biology not just as a litany of facts or a highlight reel of experiments, but as a rich, coherent discipline.

The new edition builds on Life's enduring strengths by doing what this acclaimed text has always done: combine a contemporary view of the discipline with innovative teaching and learning features. New chapters and essays, an enhanced art program, and standard-setting media and supplements combine to make this edition the finest yet..
Price: $36.21 [Notify me when price goes down.]

Using evidence from psychology, anthropology, sociology and other scientific disciplines, this book shows that there are at least three biological races (subspecies) of man Orientals (i.e., Mongoloids or Asians), Blacks (i.e., Negroids or Africans), and Whites (i.e., Caucasoids or Europeans). There are recognizable profiles for the three major racial groups on brain size, intelligence, personality and temperament, sexual behavior, and rates of fertility, maturation and longevity. The profiles reveal that, ON AVERAGE, Orientals and their descendants around the world fall at one end of the continuum, Blacks and their descendants around the world fall at the other end of the continuum, Europeans regularly fall in between. This worldwide pattern implies evolutionary and genetic, rather than purely social, political, economic, or cultural causes..
Price: $4.80 [Notify me when price goes down.]

Offering in-depth yet accessible coverage, Cummings’s HUMAN HEREDITY PRINCIPLES AND ISSUES, Eighth Edition, draws from the most current research in genetics as it presents the latest challenges facing physicians, researchers, and society. Designed for the introductory genetics or heredity course, this concise, well-written, and well-illustrated text combines thorough coverage with a superior supplement and media package that offers a wealth of study tools--including the customized learning paths of CengageNOW™. The new eighth edition includes streamlined art, chapter sidebars that address everyday issues, and numerous cases that help you analyze tough decisions. Written by a widely respected genetics authority, HUMAN HEREDITY PRINCIPLES AND ISSUES is known for its student-friendly presentation that introduces complex topics and important concepts with precise logic, without oversimplifying. Demonstrating the process of science while focusing on basic genetics concepts, the text gives you a working knowledge of heredity without the rigorous scientific/quantitative details. It discusses the various genetic services that are now developing--highlighting the social relevance and real-world applications to your other courses and personal life. Emphasizing relevant issues, the text equips you with the insight to make informed decisions about your personal health and public policy, as well as teaches you how to recognize genetic disorders, their causes, and their patterns of inheritance..
Price: $116.00 [Notify me when price goes down.]

The secrets locked in our genes are being revealed, and we find ourselves both enthused and frightened about what that portends We look forward to curing disease and alleviating suffering—for our children as well as for ourselves—but we also worry about delving too deeply into the double helix. Abuses perpetrated by eugenicists—from involuntary sterilization to murder—continue to taint our feelings about genetic screening.

Yet, as Ruth Schwartz Cowan reveals, modern genetic screening has been practiced since 1960, benefiting millions of women and children all over the world. She persuasively argues that new forms of screening—prenatal, newborn, and carrier testing—are both morally right and politically acceptable. Medical genetics, built on the desire of parents and physicians to reduce suffering and increase personal freedom, not on the desire to “improve the human race,” is in fact an entirely different enterprise from eugenics.

Cowan’s narrative moves from an account of the interwoven histories of genetics and eugenics in the first half of the twentieth century, to the development of new forms of genetic screening after mid-century. It includes illuminating chapters on the often misunderstood testing programs for sickle cell anemia, and on the world’s only mandated premarital screening programs, both of them on the island of Cyprus.

Neither minimizing the difficulty of the choices that modern genetics has created for us nor fearing them, Cowan bravely and compassionately argues that we can improve the quality of our own lives and the lives of our children by using the modern science and technology of genetic screening responsibly.

(20080522).
Price: $15.50 [Notify me when price goes down.]

Daniel Kevles traces the study and practice of eugenics--the science of "improving" the human species by exploiting theories of heredity--from its inception in the late nineteenth century to its most recent manifestation within the field of genetic engineering. It is rich in narrative, anecdote, attention to human detail, and stories of competition among scientists who have dominated the field.

.
Price: $19.95 [Notify me when price goes down.]

In the late nineteenth and the early twentieth century, it was widely assumed that society ought to foster the breeding of those who possessed favorable traits and discourage the breeding of those who did not. Controlled human breeding, "eugenics" as it was labeled by Francis Galton, seemed only good common sense.

How did eugenics come to exert such powerful and broad appeal? What events shaped its direction? Whose interests did it finally serve? Why did it fall into disrepute? Has it survived in other guises? These are some of the questions that Diane Paul sets out to answer - questions that have acquired a new urgency in light of developments in genetic medicine.

The eugenics movement appeared to be dead - associated with race and class prejudice, in particular the crimes of the Third Reich - or was it just sleeping? Has eugenics returned in the guise of medical genetics?

In the last decade, historians have come to understand that support for eugenics was diverse and tenacious, with most geneticists remaining enthusiasts through at least the 1930s. This new historiography emphasizes eugenics' broad and persistent appeal and its close association with genetics.

In CONTROLLING HUMAN HEREDITY, Professor Paul aims to bridge the gap between expert and lay understandings of the history of eugenics and thereby enrich the debate on the perplexing contemporary choices in genetics medicine..
Price: $12.86 [Notify me when price goes down.]

Philosopher David Stove concludes in his hilarious and razor-sharp inquiry that Darwin's theory of evolution is a ridiculous slander on human beings. But wait! Stove is no creationist nor a proponent of so-called intelligent design. He is a theological skeptic who admits Darwin's great genius and acknowledges that the theory of natural selection is the most successful biological theory in history. But Stove also thinks that it is also one of the most overblown and gives a penetrating inventory of what he regards as the unbelievable claims of Darwinism. Darwinian Fairytales is a must-read book for people who want to really understand the issues behind the most hotly debated scientific controversy of our time..
Price: $11.27 [Notify me when price goes down.]

"Endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being, evolved," Darwin famously concluded The Origin of Species, and for confirmation we look to...the guinea pig? How this curious creature and others as humble (and as fast-breeding) have helped unlock the mystery of inheritance is the unlikely story Jim Endersby tells in this book.

Biology today promises everything from better foods or cures for common diseases to the alarming prospect of redesigning life itself. Looking at the organisms that have made all this possible gives us a new way of understanding how we got here--and perhaps of thinking about where we're going. Instead of a history of which great scientists had which great ideas, this story of passionflowers and hawkweeds, of zebra fish and viruses, offers a bird's (or rodent's) eye view of the work that makes science possible.

Mixing the celebrities of genetics, like the fruit fly, with forgotten players such as the evening primrose, the book follows the unfolding history of biological inheritance from Aristotle's search for the "universal, absolute truth of fishiness" to the apparently absurd speculations of eighteenth-century natural philosophers to the spectacular findings of our day--which may prove to be the absurdities of tomorrow.

The result is a quirky, enlightening, and thoroughly engaging perspective on the history of heredity and genetics, tracing the slow, uncertain path--complete with entertaining diversions and dead ends--that led us from the ancient world's understanding of inheritance to modern genetics.

(20070520).
Price: $15.18 [Notify me when price goes down.]