Reader's guide to the history of science

careers in perspective. Efforts are made to capture particular moments in the profession. The origins of specialities are described. Key finds are celebrated. In total, the authorship is diverse: there are 106 contributors. Few write more than one essay. The most frequent authors are: Crow (26 essays); Dove (6); Joshua Lederberg (5); and Franklin Stahl (5). Overall, most contributors are working geneticists, though a few professional historians contribute pieces on their special interests. There is much to enjoy in this anthology. But reservations are more important. The book's publicity suggests these essays "cumulatively are a history of modem genetics research and its continuing evolution". I think not. To be sure, there are many wonderful episodes recounted and many dedicated researchers justly praised. But because the original interest was retrospection, readers of this anthology will not find discussions of post-1980 trends in genetics. Likewise, the overall focus is Anglo-American. Negative and dissident voices are rare. Failure and conflict have a small place. A great deal of the recollecting offered by non-participants derives from third and fourth hand knowledge. Errors of fact abound. Many conclusions have been superseded. Great swaths of the field go unmentioned. Science and society connections are few. Best uses for this anthology are two. First, it offers a heritage for genetics, not a history. This provides science studies scholars with a splendid and compact opportunity to examine how members of a discipline construct their past and put it to work in their present. Second, I have already seen this anthology assigned in university courses on the history of genetics. Alone it is not enough and should be complemented with original sources like that provided by Robert Robbins' e-library on genetics in the "Electronic Scholarly Publishing" project . I also have some frustrations with the assembly of this anthology. First, the articles carry no citations to their original volume and page. This forces users back to the original journals for basic publishing information. Second, the presence of an index (rare in anthologies these days) is commendable, but the result is not. It in no way helps readers access relevant essays. Third, the arrangement is chronological, which seems sensible. However, the editors also should have provided thematic links through the series to help readers. No one knows better than they how these essays interconnect as a sequence. Most important, the introduction is a disappointment. It is less than one page. This was a golden opportunity to describe how their project evolved and to offer impressions on the process to which they were so committed. As commissioning agents for the series, certainly they had goals and expectations. Were these reached? What negotiations moved this process along? How did their attitudes evolve? Were certain messages intended when commissioning particular essays? How did they handle authors clearly pressing personal agendas? On such analytical questions, the editors remain silent. We are asked to accept this anthology as a passive accumulation of knowledge. Everyone knows there's more to the story than this. I can only hope such stories will appear in future instalments of this feature in the pages of Genetics.