damsorrow's review against another edition
2.0
My mother-in-law is crazy about Natalie Angier and I hope she never reads this because I have never disagreed with her on anything in almost 2.5 years, but I dunno guys, I felt this book was a bunch of evolutionary bio/sociobiological bullshit so 90s that I actually had futurechills from, you know, now. This is written pre-Craig Venter, pre-genome, pre-babies in jars.
But I liked the part about parasites! Did you guys know that there are these certain parasites that infect the brains of mice so that they act very hyper, making them stand out and become more susceptible to being spotted and eaten by predators, thusly ensuring that the parasite finds a new host in the predator? And then there's ones that make the mouse do the exact opposite, making it really sluggish, so that the predator has an easier time catching it with the same outcome for the parasite? That's some shit.
Anyway, skim it.
But I liked the part about parasites! Did you guys know that there are these certain parasites that infect the brains of mice so that they act very hyper, making them stand out and become more susceptible to being spotted and eaten by predators, thusly ensuring that the parasite finds a new host in the predator? And then there's ones that make the mouse do the exact opposite, making it really sluggish, so that the predator has an easier time catching it with the same outcome for the parasite? That's some shit.
Anyway, skim it.
lenni's review against another edition
3.0
Don't get me wrong, I love Angier's writing. I think she's intelligent, incisive, and witty but this book didn't have much of an overarching theme or narrative thread that entices the reader to keep reading. Or rather, I often thought that Angier was setting us up to learn something new or a continuation of the past chapter's theme only to find that the subject had changed completely. This is a barrier I have quite often with anthologies but in this case it took me *months* to finish this book. It also took me about halfway through to realize that it was written in the 1990s and so many of the chapters (particularly regarding AIDS, cancer, and gene sequencing) were out of date.
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