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The Invisible History Of The Human Race: How DNA And History Shape Our Identities And Our Futures (2014)

by Christine Kenneally(Favorite Author)

3.87 of 5 Votes: 1

ISBN

0670025550 (ISBN13: 9780670025558)

languge

English

genre

History & Biography

publisher

Viking Adult

review 1: Sometimes one is at the right place and time to read a book. I am a follower of the Gates "Finding your roots" TV program that discovers genealogy of famous folk. I also have a tremendous amount of paper left me by my Mother who spent many days and hours of focusing on family last names. In addition, I had my DNA tested last year to see what matches might be found and to follow the history of humankinds spread from Africa. All such events lead to me wishing to read the book when I heard about it on NPR and got the town library to buy it. At this point, the reviews below are mostly from people who received the book from "Goodreads". They will give you a more in depth review than I.The title talks about invisible history I guess genomes from DNA are invisible but the boo... morek felt more like our undiscovered history and recently revealing history to me. Undiscovered because if one is not Asian with a cultural mandate to keep genealogy, few people know more than a few generations of names and history unless they specifically search them out. The author divides the book into four major themes. 1. Ideas about what is passed down. This talks about family history and genealogy. 2. What is passed down which includes talk about DNA, culture politics and world history. 3. How what is passed down shapes bodies and minds to look and act as one does. 4. The final section about the past which may not make you feel better delves into the problems interbreeding and passing down of genetic handicaps that may give you bad body formation or crippling effects to your life.
review 2: I was expecting this book to have far more examples from rigid scientific and empirical studies, but it provided more of an anecdotal approach, which still proved to be very interesting. This is not to say that the author excluded more traditional experimental studies from this work but only that she relied less on this approach and more on individual case studies.The first few chapters focused so strongly on specific examples with so little emphasis rigorous experimental data that their role as exemplars was not as strong as they might otherwise have been, but the examples were still of such quality as both to hold the reader's attention as well as to shed some light on the larger picture of human ancestry and inter-relatedness.All in all, this was a fascinating read describing in many close, personal examples how we humans are related and how our ancestry has shaped who we are. less

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