She Has Her Mother's Laugh

<p><b>SHORTLISTED FOR THE 2018 BAILLIE GIFFORD PRIZE FOR NON-FICTION</b></p><p><i>She Has Her Mother’s Laugh</i> presents a profoundly original perspective on what we pass along from generation to generation. Charles Darwin played a crucial part in turning heredity into a scientific question, and yet he failed spectacularly to answer it. The birth of genetics in the early 1900s seemed to do precisely that. Gradually, people translated their old notions about heredity into a language of genes. As the technology for studying genes became cheaper, millions of people ordered genetic tests to link themselves to missing parents, to distant ancestors, to ethnic identities . . .</p><p>But, award-winning science writer Carl Zimmer argues, heredity isn’t just about genes that pass from parent to child. Heredity continues within our own bodies, as a single cell gives rise to trillions of cells that make up our bodies. We say we inh