DNA: The Secret of Life

"Fifty years ago, James D. Watson, then just twenty-four, helped launch the greatest ongoing scientific quest of our time. Now, with unique authority and sweeping vision, he gives us the first full account of the genetic revolution - from Mendel's garden to the double helix to the sequencing of the human genome and beyond." "But genetics as we recognize it today - with its capacity, both thrilling and sobering, to manipulate the very essence of living things - came into being only with the rise of molecular investigations culminating in the breakthrough discovery of the structure of DNA, for which Watson shared a Nobel prize in 1962. In the DNA molecule's graceful curves was the key to a whole new science."