Human Genetic Engineering

Stepping effortlessly from myth to cutting-edge science, Mutants gives a brilliant narrative account of our genetic code and the captivating people whose bodies have revealed it - a French convent girl who found herself changing sex at puberty; children who, echoing Homer's Cyclops, are born with a single eye in the middle of their foreheads; a village of long-lived Croatian dwarves; one family, whose bodies were entirely covered with hair, was kept at the Burmese royal court for four generations and gave Darwin one of his keenest insights into heredity.

In this groundbreaking work, evolutionary biologist Jared Diamond stunningly dismantles racially based theories of human history by revealing the environmental factors actually responsible for history's broadest patterns. It is a story that spans 13,000 years of human history, beginning when Stone Age hunter-gatherers constituted the entire human population. Guns, Germs, and Steel is a world history that really is a history of all the world's peoples, a unified narrative of human life.

In our unique genomes, every one of us carries the story of our species - births, deaths, disease, war, famine, migration, and a lot of sex. But those stories have always been locked away - until now. Who are our ancestors? Where did they come from? Geneticists have suddenly become historians, and the hard evidence in our DNA has completely upended what we thought we knew about ourselves. Acclaimed science writer Adam Rutherford explains exactly how genomics is completely rewriting the human story - from 100,000 years ago to the present.

Having done field work in New Guinea for more than 30 years, Jared Diamond presents the geographical and ecological factors that have shaped the modern world. From the viewpoint of an evolutionary biologist, he highlights the broadest movements both literal and conceptual on every continent since the Ice Age, and examines societal advances such as writing, religion, government, and technology.

What is human consciousness, and how is it possible? This question fascinates thinking people from poets and painters to physicists, psychologists, and philosophers. From Bacteria to Bach and Back is Daniel C. Dennett's brilliant answer, extending perspectives from his earlier work in surprising directions, exploring the deep interactions of evolution, brains, and human culture.

There are rare moments in time when we make choices that irreversibly change the world, and our lives, forever. Today is one of those moments. Scientists, engineers and philosophers alike warn us that without a radical shift in our thinking, we are on track to be the last generation of pure humans that the world will know. Within a single generation we will devolve into a hybrid species of synthetic bodies, Artificial Intelligence (AI), and computer chips that limit our ability to think, to love, and to adapt to the conditions of the emerging world in a healthy way.

V. S. Ramachandran is at the forefront of his field - so much so that Richard Dawkins dubbed him the "Marco Polo of neuroscience". Now, in a major new work, Ramachandran sets his sights on the mystery of human uniqueness. Taking us to the frontiers of neurology, he reveals what baffling and extreme case studies can teach us about normal brain function and how it evolved.

Humans are a puzzling species. On the one hand, we struggle to survive on our own in the wild, often failing to overcome even basic challenges, like obtaining food, building shelters, or avoiding predators. On the other hand, human groups have produced ingenious technologies, sophisticated languages, and complex institutions that have permitted us to successfully expand into a vast range of diverse environments. What has enabled us to dominate the globe, more than any other species, while remaining virtually helpless as lone individuals?

Evolutionary theory has long established that humans are animals: Modern Homo sapiens are primates who share an ancestor with monkeys and other great apes. Our genome is 98 percent identical to a chimpanzee's. And yet we think of ourselves as exceptional. Are we? In this original and entertaining tour of life on Earth, Adam Rutherford explores the profound paradox of the "human animal".

We humans like to think of ourselves as highly evolved creatures. But if we are supposedly evolution's greatest creation, why do we have such bad knees? Why do we catch head colds so often - 200 times more often than a dog does? How come our wrists have so many useless bones? And are we really supposed to swallow and breathe through the same narrow tube? Surely there's been some kind of mistake. As professor of biology Nathan H. Lents explains in Human Errors, our evolutionary history is nothing if not a litany of mistakes, each more entertaining and enlightening than the last.

You are just 10% human. For every one of the cells that make up the vessel that you call your body, there are nine impostor cells hitching a ride. You are not just flesh and blood, muscle and bone, brain and skin, but also bacteria and fungi. Over your lifetime, you will carry the equivalent weight of five African elephants in microbes. You are not an individual but a colony. Until recently, we had thought our microbes hardly mattered, but science is revealing a different story, one in which microbes run our bodies and becoming a healthy human is impossible without them.

50 Great Myths of Human Evolution uses common misconceptions to explore basic theory and research in human evolution and strengthen critical thinking skills for lay audiences, listeners, and students. Includes myths such as: "Humans lived at the same time as dinosaurs"; "Lucy was so small because she was a child"; "Our ancestors have always made fire"; and "There is a strong relationship between brain size and intelligence."

In Ancestors in Our Genome, molecular anthropologist Eugene E. Harris presents us with a complete and up-to-date account of the evolution of the human genome and our species. Written from the perspective of population genetics, and in simple terms, the book traces human origins back to their source among our earliest human ancestors, and explains many of the most intriguing questions that genome scientists are currently working to answer.

Throughout history, even as daily life has exhibited calm and tolerance, war has never been far away, and even within societies, violence can be a threat. The Goodness Paradox gives a new and powerful argument for how and why this uncanny combination of peacefulness and violence crystallized after our ancestors acquired language in Africa a quarter of a million years ago.

The Human Blend is a science-fiction adventure centered around a group of thieves living in a future where physical alterations and enhancements are a common occurrence. If you could take on a body with any features you wanted, what would it look like? And what would you do with them - human or otherwise?

In the year 2080, the Earth was a shadow of what it once was. The AGI Wars of the 2030s had devastated the planet. The Artificial General Intelligence that once showed promise to help mankind only enhanced its obsession for destruction. The fallout from the AGI Wars had a huge environmental impact, and Humanity was left in ruins, struggling to survive. Seeing an opportunity to assert their dominance, private corporations used their advanced technology to seize control. Joe Walker and his friends took it upon themselves to expose the truth and restore humanity's freedom. During a high-...

Over the last century, the search for human ancestors has spanned four continents and resulted in the discovery of hundreds of fossils. While most of these discoveries live quietly in museums, there are a few that have become world-renowned celebrity personas. In Seven Skeletons, historian of science Lydia Pyne explores how seven such famous fossils of our ancestors have the social cachet they enjoy today.

The replacement of humans has begun. It starts with the voices ... It is war-ravaged China in the 1930’s. John Powers and his fellow group of pilgrims are trying to evade Nationalist forces, communist rebels and the invading Japanese army, all while carrying a strange golden statue and searching for a mysterious woman known as Her. At the same time, John begins hearing voices insisting that he conceive a son with another of the travelers. Who is Her? Why do the voices want John to have a son? Are the voices evidence that John has schizophrenia, as he fears? Or are they something else ...

Why do women live longer than men? Why do women have menopause? Why are women more likely to get Alzheimer’s? Why do girls score better at every academic subject than boys until puberty, when suddenly their scores plummet? And does the female brain really exist? In Eve, Cat Bohannon answers questions scientists should have been addressing for decades. With boundless curiosity and sharp wit, she covers the past 200 million years to explain the specific science behind the development of the female sex.

Equal parts Sapiens, Behave, and Superintelligence, but wholly original in scope, A Brief History of Intelligence offers a paradigm shift for how we understand neuroscience and AI. Artificial intelligence entrepreneur Max Bennett chronicles the five “breakthroughs” in the evolution of human intelligence and reveals what brains of the past can tell us about the AI of tomorrow.