Biology

Filled with hundreds of attractive full-color illustrations, photos, and easy-to-understand diagrams, this very accessible book tells the story of life in its many forms—plants, animals, and even amoeba, bacteria, and fungi.

Ribosomes are enormous molecular machines, even more ancient than DNA, that translate the information in our genes into proteins. Those proteins in turn make up much of our bodies and catalyze thousands of processes within our cells. A ribosome, in short, is a machine no cell can do without.

In Blueprint, Nicholas A. Christakis introduces the compelling idea that our genes affect not only our bodies and behaviors, but also the ways in which we make societies, ones that are surprisingly similar worldwide.