Reading the genome like a history book

Book Review: "Loving Literature. A Cultural History"

It is widely acknowledged that emotion is deeply embedded in literary criticism. Even when we aspire to scientific analysis and objectivity, we assume that we share a love of literature. Loving Literature is a deep and fascinating exploration of this important assumption. Literary critics and professors of literature are expected not only to know but also to love their work. In the case of prof...

Reading the Qur’an as a Law Book

Reading the book of life

With the publication of the human genome sequence, we are passing into a new phase in the analysis of what is popularly being called the ‘Book of Life’. However symbolic the shift, it is nevertheless palpable: the data will be in a more or less contiguous, more or less stable form, constituting a reference text against which coding and regulatory regions, polymorphisms, model organism sequences...

Is WORLD HISTORY LIKE AN ONION? THIS BOOK ATTEMPTS TO PROVIDE A SHORT HISTORY OF EVERYbody

In this Pulitzer Prize-winning book, Jared Diamond argues that both geography and the environment played major roles in determining the shape of the modern world. This argument runs counter to the usual theories that cite biology as the crucial factor. Diamond claims that the cultures that were first able to domesticate plants and animals were then able to develop writing skills, as well as mak...

Review of the book "Race and History"

In 1952, the UNESCO International Organization published a series on explaining and clarifying the role of culture in society and suggested the writing of a book on the issue of race throughout history to Claude Lévi-Strauss, a prominent French anthropologist. The result of his efforts is the publication of a book called "Race and History". Race and History is one of the books that was translat...