Colin Tudge

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Engineer In The Garden

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The Engineer in the Garden is an engagingly quirky and broadly informed account of modern genetics, heredity and evolution that teems with the latest facts, briskly and brightly conveyed... If you are concerned about the genetic future, you could do no better than to read this wise and thoughtful book.

In his excellent account of what we are about to let ourselves in for, Colin Tudge unravels the mysteries of genetic engineering and its applications with great skill.

A mammoth task at which he succeeds admirably.

Could not be bettered as a popular introduction to genetic knowledge.

Today we are developing a science that could change the world - for good or ill - more quickly and more profoundly than ever before. The science of genetics promises - or threatens - nothing less than the creation of life. 
 
Colin Tudge leads the reader gently through the deepest intricacies of genetics. He traces its history. He explores its awesome power and its current applications. And he speculates on its thrilling - or terrifying - future. He has written an essential book for anyone interested in the future of the human race.

Does for genetics what THE BLIND WATCHMAKER did for biology: it explains, it excites, it makes us imagine and think. Nature is the 'garden' of the title; the 'engineer' is the geneticist, far less in control than he or she thinks.

Science writer Colin Tudge was born on 22 April 1943 in London, and was educated at Peterhouse, Cambridge. He worked as a journalist and was features editor for New Scientist magazine between 1980 and 1984, before joining the BBC where he worked on science programmes for BBC Radio, presenting the regular programme 'Spectrum'. He is a regular contributor to newspapers and magazines including The Independent, The Times, Natural History and the New Statesman. He is a former member of the Council of The Zoological Society of London and since 1995 has been a visiting Research Fellow of the Centre for Philosophy at the London School of Economics. 
 
Two of his books have been shortlisted for the COPUS/Rhone Poulence Science Book of the Year: Last Animals at the Zoo (1991) and The Engineer in the Garden (1993). The Day Before Yesterday (1995) won the B.P. Conservation Book of the Year Award. His latest book is The Secret Life of Trees (2005).

Engineer In The Garden

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Colin Tudge

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