Books

Praise for Gerald Weissmann:

“Erudite energy leaps from this lively commingling of art, culture and science. . . . In each [essay], Weissmann finds links between research and elements of history and pop culture, which play off each other to illuminating effect. So US politician Sarah Palin pops up in a discussion of ‘Marie Antoinette syndrome’, in which hair allegedly whitens overnight; and the ‘meltdown’ of the mythical Icarus meets the nuclear version at the Fukushima Daiichi power plant in Japan.” —Nature

“A joy for the heart and instructive for the mind.” —ERIC KANDEL, Nobel Prize-winning author of The Age of Insight

“A fascinating tour through history, science, and pop culture.” —DR. MAX GOMEZ, Emmy Award-winning WCBS-TV Medical Correspondent

“The premier essayist of our time, Gerald Weissmann writes with grace and style.” —RICHARD SELZER

“[Weissmann] bridges the space between science and the humanities, and particularly between medicine and the muses, with wit, erudition, and, most important, wisdom.” —ADAM GOPNIK

“Weissmann introduces us to a new way of thinking about the connections between art and medicine.” —The New York Times Book Review

The Sojourn

Epigenetics in the Age of Twitter: Pop Culture and Modern Science

Gerald Weissmann

Price: $18.95
Paperback ISBN: 978-1-934137-39-0
eBook ISBN: 978-1-934137-51-2

Called “an absolutely first-rate writer” by Kurt Vonnegut Jr., Gerald Weissmann is not merely another popular science writer and intellectual historian, but one of our most incisive cultural critics and satirists. Whether contrasting the science of reproductive biology with J-Lo’s view of fertility, engaging in the healthcare debate, or imagining the future prose styling of the scientific research paper in the age of Twitter, his writing is always instructive and often hilarious.

Epigenetics, which attempts to explain how our genes respond to our environment, is the latest twist on the historic nature/nurture debate. In addressing this and other controversies in contemporary science Weissmann taps what he calls “the social network of Western Civilization,” including the many neglected women of science: from the martyred Hypatia of Alexandria, the first woman scientist, to the Nobel laureates Marie Curie, Christine Nusslein-Volhard, and Elizabeth Blackburn, among other luminaries in the field.

Gerald Weissmann is director of the Biotechnology Study Center at the New York University School of Medicine and editor-in-chief of The FASEB Journal. His essays and reviews have appeared in numerous publications worldwide, including the London Review of Books and The New York Times Book Review.

Publication Date: March 2012 / Pages: 300 / Trim Size: 6 x 9