Overview

A groundbreaking book about how ancient DNA has profoundly changed our understanding of human history Geneticists like David Reich have made astounding advances in the field of genomics, which is proving to be as important as archaeology, linguistics, and written records as a means to understand our ancestry. In Who We Are and How We Got Here, Reich allows listeners to discover how the human genome provides not only all the information a human embryo needs to develop but also the hidden story of our species. Reich delves into how the genomic revolution is transforming our understanding of modern humans and how DNA studies reveal deep inequalities among different populations, between the sexes, and among individuals. Provocatively, Reich's book suggests that there might very well be biological differences among human populations but that these differences are unlikely to conform to common stereotypes. Drawing upon revolutionary findings and unparalleled scientific studies, Who We Are and How We Got Here is a captivating glimpse into humankind-where we came from and what that says about our lives today.

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9781982541224

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Reviews

Charts the myriad ways the study of ancient DNA is lobbing bombs into the halls of established wisdom. -- Atlantic Provides a marvelous synthesis of the field. -- Financial Times (London) [Who We Are and How We Got Here] is mostly not a controversial book, but a wondrous one. It sheds light on the nascent field of ancient DNA, paleogenetics, which is exposing the human past by tracing population histories. Give a paleogeneticist a single genome, and they will unfurl the history of whole peoples. -- India Today Thrilling in its clarity and its scope. -- Guardian (London) A thrilling account of mapping humans through time and place...We do need a non-loaded way to talk about genetic diversity and similarities in populations. This book goes some way to starting that conversation. -- Nature The work in [Reich's] lab has reshaped our understanding of human prehistory...He and his colleagues have shed light on the peopling of the planet and the spread of agriculture, among other momentous events. -- New York Times Reich documents an extraordinary moment in the history of science...A potential political bombshell. -- Wall Street Journal

Charts the myriad ways the study of ancient DNA is lobbing bombs into the halls of established wisdom. -- Atlantic Provides a marvelous synthesis of the field. -- Financial Times (London) A thrilling account of mapping humans through time and place...We do need a non-loaded way to talk about genetic diversity and similarities in populations. This book goes some way to starting that conversation. -- Nature The work in [Reich's] lab has reshaped our understanding of human prehistory...He and his colleagues have shed light on the peopling of the planet and the spread of agriculture, among other momentous events. -- New York Times [Who We Are and How We Got Here] is mostly not a controversial book, but a wondrous one. It sheds light on the nascent field of ancient DNA, paleogenetics, which is exposing the human past by tracing population histories. Give a paleogeneticist a single genome, and they will unfurl the history of whole peoples. -- India Today Thrilling in its clarity and its scope. -- Guardian (London) Reich documents an extraordinary moment in the history of science...A potential political bombshell. -- Wall Street Journal

Author Information

David Reich, professor of genetics at Harvard Medical School, and a Howard Hughes Medical Institute investigator, is one of the world's leading pioneers in analyzing ancient human DNA. In a 2015 article in Nature, he was named one of ten people who matter in all of the sciences for his contribution to transforming ancient DNA data from niche pursuit to industrial process. Awards he has received include the Newcomb Cleveland Prize from the American Association for the Advancement of Science and the Dan David Prize in the Archaeological and Natural Sciences for his computational discovery of intermixing between Neanderthals and Homo sapiens. Patrick Cullen (a.k.a. John Lescault), a native of Massachusetts, is a graduate of the Catholic University of America. He lives in Washington, DC, where he works in theater.

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