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The Dawn of Human Genetics

By V.V. Babkov
Edited By James Schwartz; Translated from the Russian by Victor Fet

© 2013 • 775 pp., illus. (91 B&W ), index
Hardcover • $69 • ISBN 978-1-936113-70-5

In Russia, the initial euphoria of the Bolshevik leaders for a new socialist society ... combined with a commitment to a truly universal health care system, gave a huge boost to the emergence of both the eugenic and medical aspects of human genetics. The obstacles that proved so formidable to the successful launch of the field in the West—the lack of available data on the genealogy of diseases in families, the difficulty in getting a statistically significant number of identical twins to study, and the skepticism of the medical establishment—were all swept aside in the Soviet Union. In the 1920s ... the groundwork was laid for a uniquely Russian approach to medical genetics and (the foundation of) the world’s leading center for the study of the genetic basis of many diseases and human genetics in general. The immense success of the movement, which is little known even to Russians, is brought to life in V.V. Babkov’s The Dawn of Human Genetics, as is its dramatic and violent end, which resulted in the “liquidation” of many of the country’s finest biologists, as well as a major setback to the development of world science. Like many other promising ideas and projects that were born in the Soviet Union, this one was abruptly truncated and then virtually eradicated.

The Annotated and Illustrated Double Helix

By James D. Watson, Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory; Alexander Gann, Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory; Jan Witkowski, Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory

© 2013 • 345 pages, illus. (320 B&W), index
Hardcover • $Not for Sale • ISBN 978-1-476715-49-0

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RNA: Life's Indispensable Molecule

By James Darnell, The Rockefeller University

© 2011 • 416 pp., illus., appendix, index
Hardcover • $40.00 • ISBN 978-1-936113-19-4

In RNA: Life’s Indispensable Molecule, Jim Darnell provides a comprehensive and captivating account of RNA research, illuminated by his own life-long and celebrated engagement in the field. Darnell describes how scientists unraveled fundamental questions about the biochemical and genetic importance of RNA—how mRNAs are generated and used to produce proteins, how noncoding and catalytic RNAs mediate key cellular processes, and how RNA molecules likely initiated life on Earth. With a scope extending from the early 20th century to the present day, and with the clarity expected from an accomplished textbook author, he conveys the intellectual context in which these questions first arose and explains how the key experiments were structured and answers obtained. The book is geared towards scientists from the graduate level on up, and will particularly appeal to active investigators in RNA biology, educators of molecular biology and biochemistry, and science historians.

About the Author

James E. Darnell, Jr., M.D. has been Vincent Astor Professor at The Rockefeller University since 1974. His career has included poliovirus research with Harry Eagle at the National Institutes of Health, research with François Jacob at the Pasteur Institute in Paris, and academic appointments at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Albert Einstein College of Medicine, and Columbia University. He has mentored over 120 doctoral students and postdoctoral scientists. From the very beginning of his first lab at MIT, Darnell, his students and postdocs have studied RNA, its synthesis, processing, and transcriptional regulation.

Darnell is a member of the National Academy of Sciences and has received numerous awards, including the 2003 National Medal of Science and the 2002 Albert Lasker Award for Special Achievement in Medical Science. He is the coauthor, with S.E. Luria, of General Virology (Wiley) and the founding author with Harvey Lodish and David Baltimore of Molecular Cell Biology

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Mutation: The History of an Idea from Darwin to Genomics

By Elof Axel Carlson, Professor Emeritus, State University of New York at Stony Brook; Visiting Scholar, Institute for Advanced Study, Indiana University

© 2011 • 163 pp., illus. (11 b/w), index
Hardcover • $57.00 • ISBN 978-1-936113-30-9

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Sydney Brenner: A Biography

By Errol C. Friedberg, University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center at Dallas

© 2011 • 334 pp., illus. (59 b/w), index
Trim size: 6” x 9”
Hardcover • $40.00 • ISBN 978-0-879699-47-5

Over his long and inspiring career, the Nobel Laureate Sydney Brenner has made some of the most significant and game-changing discoveries in the field of molecular biology. But Brenner’s reach has extended well beyond his own research to inspire new generations of young scientists and to promote the development of science and biotechnology around the world. Based on his personal recollections, with contributions and correspondence from his close friends and colleagues, this book tells the lively story, not only of Brenner himself, but of what came to be known as the “golden age” of biology.About the author: Errol C. Friedberg, M.D., is the Senator Betty and Dr. Andy Andujar Distinguished Professor and Chair at the Department of Pathology, University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center at Dallas. A Fellow of the Royal College of Pathologists and recipient of the Rous Whipple Award from the American Society for Investigative Pathology, Friedberg also serves as Editor-in-Chief of the journal DNA Repair. Friedberg is the author of Cancer Answers, Correcting the Blueprint of Life: An Historical Account of the Discovery of DNA Repair Mechanisms, The Writing Life of James D. Watson, and From Rags to Riches: The Phenomenal Rise of The University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center at Dallas. He is also senior author of the textbook DNA Repair & Mutagenesis, and has edited and annotated a series of interviews published as Sydney Brenner: My Life in Science.

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Francis Crick: Hunter of Life’s Secrets

By Robert Olby

© 2009 • 538 pp, illus., indexes
Hardcover • $46.00 • ISBN 978-087969798-3

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What a Time I Am Having: Selected Letters of Max Perutz

Edited By Vivien Perutz

© 2009 • 506 pp., illus., index
Hardcover • $40.00 • ISBN 978-087969864-5

Selected by his daughter, Vivien, from Max Perutz’s voluminous correspondence, the letters reproduced here portray their author with a spontaneity and directness no autobiography could have matched. They chronicle Perutz’s adventurous life through his own vivid, erudite and humorous pen, documenting the hopes, roadblocks and moments of elation of his sixty-year quest to understand the molecular biology of hemoglobin. The first great step in this quest — unraveling the molecular structure of hemoglobin — earned Perutz the 1962 Nobel Prize in Chemistry. Narrated against a backdrop of family and friends, politics and war, literature, travels, and Max’s beloved mountains, these letters provide rare insight into the thoughts of a remarkable and very human scientist, and delightful sketches of some of the people he encountered. Starting with lively letters to a girlfriend written in his youth in Vienna and the impressions of a young scientist in Cambridge, the letters progress to the desperate pleas of an “enemy alien” interned in Canada during World War II. The diary of Perutz’s subsequent super-secret war work for the British to build a floating ice airstrip in the North Atlantic, ardent campaigning letters to scientists and politicians, and self-deprecating stories of his own mishaps written to amuse his children and grandchildren are some of the many highlights of these fascinating letters, unique in the annals of recent scientific history. This book is a companion to Georgina Ferry’s Max Perutz and the Secret of Life. Together these volumes provide a portrait of an extraordinary character in the development of molecular biology.

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The Strongest Boy in the World: How Genetic Information is Reshaping Our Lives, Updated and Expanded Edition

By Philip R. Reilly

© 2008 • 300 pp., illus., bibliography, index
Paperback • $16 • ISBN 978-087969943-7

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Life Illuminated: Selected Papers from Cold Spring Harbor
Volume 2, 1972–1994

Edited By Jan A. Witkowski, Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, New York; Alexander Gann, Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, New York; Joseph F. Sambrook, Peter MacCallum Cancer Institute, East Melbourne, Australia

© 2008 • 242 pp., illustrations from original articles, indexes, CD
Hardcover • $39 $19.50 • ISBN 978-087969804-1

This book is the second volume of an intellectual history of the science done at CSHL (the first volume, Illuminating Life, showed that genetics became the dominant theme of research at CSH by as early as 1904). The appointment of James Watson as Director of the Laboratory in 1968 set off the explosive research development at CSH, as he recruited widely and wisely teams of investigators with diverse scientific interests. From this collection of papers, presented in full on the accompanying CD, several themes emerge: the characterization and exploitation of mobile genetic elements; the mechanics of DNA replication and regulation of the cell cycle; the behavior and internal architecture of cells; how viruses induce tumors; the discovery of cancer genes; the characteristics of neurons; and the invention of techniques that make possible further progress. Each theme is introduced in the context of the science of the time, and each paper has a commentary by, in most cases, one of its authors. Life Illuminated is a story of scientific innovation and achievement, told in the words of the investigators themselves.

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Davenport’s Dream: 21^st Century Reflections on Heredity & Eugenics

Edited By Jan A. Witkowski, Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory; John R. Inglis, Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory

© 2008 • 490 pp., illus.
Hardcover • $55 $27.50 • ISBN 978-087969756-3

In 1911, the influential geneticist Charles Davenport published Heredity in Relation to Eugenics, advancing his ideas of how genetics would improve society in the 20th century. It became a college textbook and a foundation for the widespread eugenics movement in the United States. Nearly 100 years later, many of the issues raised by Davenport are again being debated, in different guises. In this new volume, prominent academics discuss themes from Davenport’s book—human genetic variation, mental illness, nature vs. nurture, human evolution—in a contemporary context. Davenport’s original book is reprinted along with the essays. This book will be useful to historians of science as well as those interested in the social implications of human genetics research—past, present, and future.