Unnatural Selection: How We are Changing Life, Gene by Gene by Emily Monosson [Island Press, 2015; Amazon UK hardcover/kindle UK; Amazon US hardcover/kindle US]

Publisher’s synopsis: In a narrative style, Emily Monosson explains how humans are driving rapid contemporary evolution through the use of toxic chemicals and what we can do about it. Gonorrhoea. Bed bugs. Weeds. Salamanders. Polar Bears. People. All are evolving, some surprisingly rapidly, in response to our chemical age. In Unnatural Selection, Emily Monosson shows how our drugs, pesticides, and pollution are exerting intense selection pressure on all manner of species. And we humans might not like the result. Monosson reveals that the very code of life is more fluid than once imagined. When our powerful chemicals put the pressure on to evolve or die, beneficial traits can sweep rapidly through a population. Species with explosive population growth, the insects, bacteria and weeds, tend to thrive, while bigger, slower-to-reproduce creatures, like ourselves, are more likely to succumb. Unnatural Selection is eye-opening and more than a little disquieting. But it also suggests how we might lesson our impact: manage pests without creating super bugs; protect individuals from disease without inviting epidemics; and benefit from technology without threatening the health of our children.

My first impression: WOW! This deceptively slender book packs a helluva powerful punch. Unnatural Selection is an engaging and eye-opening book that is essential reading for everyone -- city dwellers and country folk alike -- who lives on planet Earth. It tells the important story of the many chemicals that people use and abuse, from antibiotics to pesticides. Use of these chemicals creates selection pressures that their targets most evolve rapidly to deal with, and evolve they are. We now have entire cities teeming with bedbugs that cannot be killed by pesticides, hospitals tainted with bacteria that have evolved into antibiotic-resistant flesh-eating monsters, and farms crammed with Roundup-resistant weeds. Like reading a dystopian novel, this book will capture your imagination and keep you awake into the wee hours. But unlike a dystopian novel, the author actually proposes evolutionarily-sound strategies for what we can do to stop the damage before it becomes lasting.

Ancestors in Our Genome: The New Science of Human Evolution by Eugene E. Harris [Oxford University Press, 2014; Amazon UK hardcover/kindle UK; Amazon US hardcover/kindle US]

Publisher’s synopsis: In 2001, scientists were finally able to determine the full human genome sequence, and with the discovery began a genomic voyage back in time. Since then, we have sequenced the full genomes of a number of mankind’s primate relatives at a remarkable rate. The genomes of the common chimpanzee (2005) and bonobo (2012), orangutan (2011), gorilla (2012), and macaque monkey (2007) have already been identified, and the determination of other primate genomes is well underway. Researchers are beginning to unravel our full genomic history, comparing it with closely related species to answer age-old questions about how and when we evolved. For the first time, we are finding our own ancestors in our genome and are thereby gleaning new information about our evolutionary past.

In Ancestors in Our Genome, molecular anthropologist Eugene E. Harris presents us with a complete and up-to-date account of the evolution of the human genome and our species. Written from the perspective of population genetics, and in simple terms, the book traces human origins back to their source among our earliest human ancestors, and explains many of the most intriguing questions that genome scientists are currently working to answer. For example, what does the high level of discordance among the gene trees of humans and the African great apes tell us about our respective separations from our common ancestor? Was our separation from the apes fast or slow, and when and why did it occur? Where, when, and how did our modern species evolve? How do we search across genomes to find the genomic underpinnings of our large and complex brains and language abilities? How can we find the genomic bases for life at high altitudes, for lactose tolerance, resistance to disease, and for our different skin pigmentations? How and when did we interbreed with Neandertals and the recently discovered ancient Denisovans of Asia? Harris draws upon extensive experience researching primate evolution in order to deliver a lively and thorough history of human evolution. Ancestors in Our Genomeis the most complete discussion of our current understanding of the human genome available.

My first impression: This book reports how modern humans came to be by combining fossil and artifactual evidence with genetics to tell the story from when the human-chimpanzee split occurred. The subject is interesting, but the author’s repetitiveness and some sloppy use of terms detracts from the intended message.

The Ethics of Everyday Life: Moral Theology, Social Anthropology, and the Imagination of the Human by Michael Banner [Oxford University Press, 2014; Amazon UK hardcover/kindle UK; Amazon US hardcover/kindle US]

Publisher’s synopsis: Why do we have children and what do we raise them for? Does the proliferation of depictions of suffering in the media enhance, or endanger, compassion? How do we live and die well in the extended periods of debility which old age now threatens? Why and how should we grieve for the dead? And how should we properly remember other grief and grievances?

In addressing such questions, the Christian imagination of human life has been powerfully shaped by the imagination of Christ’s life Christs conception, birth, suffering, death, and burial have been subjects of profound attention in Christian thought, just as they are moments of special interest and concern in each and every human life. However, they are also sites of contention and controversy, where what it is to be human is discovered, constructed, and contested. Conception, birth, suffering, burial, and death are occasions, in other words, for profound and continuing questioning regarding the meaning of human life, as controversies to do with IVF, abortion, euthanasia, and the use of bodies and body parts post mortem, indicate.

In The Ethics of Everyday Life, Michael Banner argues that moral theology must reconceive its nature and tasks if it is not only to articulate its own account of human being, but also to enter into constructive contention with other accounts. In particular, it must be willing to learn from and engage with social anthropology if it is to offer powerful and plausible portrayals of the moral life and answers to the questions which trouble modernity. Drawing in wide-ranging fashion from social anthropology and from Christian thought and practice from many periods, and influenced especially by his engagement in public policy matters including as a member of the UK’s Human Tissue Authority, Banner develops the outlines of an everyday ethics, stretching from before the cradle to after the grave.

My first impression: This book is a series of lectures about Christian morality as explained by an Anglican, adapted to book format. I’ve only just started reading this book, but already, I am somewhat annoyed by the author’s frequent self-interruptions as he tries to develop and express his ideas. The chapters tend to include many footnotes, some of which are quite lengthy. The prose is dense and at times, soporific.

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When she’s not got her nose stuck in a book, GrrlScientist is very active on twitter @GrrlScientist and lurks on social media: facebook, G+, LinkedIn, and Pinterest.