A Brief History of Everyone Who Ever Lived

The Stories in Our Genes

De: Adam Rutherford

Narrado por: Adam Rutherford

'A brilliant, authoritative, surprising, captivating introduction to human genetics. You'll be spellbound' Brian Cox

This is a story about you.

It is the history of who you are and how you came to be. It is unique to you, as it is to each of the 100 billion modern humans who have ever drawn breath. But it is also our collective story, because in every one of our genomes we each carry the history of our species - births, deaths, disease, war, famine, migration and a lot of sex.

In this captivating journey through the expanding landscape of genetics, Adam Rutherford reveals what our genes now tell us about human history, and what history can now tell us about our genes. From Neanderthals to murder, from redheads to race, dead kings to plague, evolution to epigenetics, this is a demystifying and illuminating new portrait of who we are and how we came to be.

***

'A thoroughly entertaining history of Homo sapiens and its DNA in a manner that displays popular science writing at its best' Observer

'Magisterial, informative and delightful' Peter Frankopan

'An extraordinary adventure...From the Neanderthals to the Vikings, from the Queen of Sheba to Richard III, Rutherford goes in search of our ancestors, tracing the genetic clues deep into the past' Alice Roberts©2016 Adam Rutherford

Reseñas de la Crítica

I very much enjoyed and admired . . . A Brief History of Everyone Who Ever Lived (Bill Bryson)

An effervescent work, brimming with tales and confounding ideas carried in the "epic poem in our cells". The myriad storylines will leave you swooning . . . Rutherford, a trained geneticist, is an enthusiastic guide (Colin Grant)

A thoroughly entertaining history of Homo sapiens and its DNA in a manner that displays popular science writing at its best (Robin McKie)

A brilliant, authoritative, surprising, captivating introduction to human genetics. If you know little about the human story, you will be spellbound. If you know a lot about the human story, you'll be spellbound. It's that good (Brian Cox)

If you are ethnically British, one thing is certain: your ancestors definitely had sex with Neanderthals. On the other hand, they probably didn't have sex with Vikings, who, it turns out, did a fair bit more pillaging than raping. And, depending on the flakiness of your earwax, it is just conceivable that your relatives' unattractiveness to hairy and horned invaders was related to their body odour. DNA is fragile, confusing and contains a lot of pointless data. But unlike other accounts of human history it doesn't lie. Adam Rutherford's soaring book is an exposition of what this new science really tells us about who we are

Adam Rutherford's book is well-written, stimulating and entertaining. What's more important, he consistently gets it right

One of the most extraordinary things about this book is its sheer breadth. Rutherford, a writer and geneticist, weaves from our genes a fascinating tapestry of human history from its most primitive origins to its sophisticated present, and beyond ... The writing is concise and often funny, and Rutherford never takes himself or his subject too seriously ... It is one of those rare books that you'll finish thinking you haven't wasted a single second (Brad Davies)

Magisterial, informative and delightful (Peter Frankopan)

Rutherford takes off on an extraordinary adventure, following the wandering trail of DNA across the globe and back in time. And on the way, he reveals what DNA can - and can't - tell us about ourselves, our history and our deep evolutionary heritage. From the Neanderthals to the Vikings, from the Queen of Sheba to Richard III, Rutherford goes in search of our ancestors, tracing the genetic clues deep into the past . . . Wide-ranging, witty, full of surprises and studded with sparkling insights - Rutherford uncovers the epic history of the human species, written in DNA (Alice Roberts)

A captivating delight. With witty, authoritative and profound prose, Adam Rutherford tackles the biggest of issues - where we came from, and what makes us who we are. He does more than any author to cut through the confusion around genetics, and to reveal what modern genetics has to say about our identity, history and future (Ed Yong)

compelling, exciting and myth shattering

answered many of my questions after I got my genome studied and explored other thought-provoking questions I would not have dared ask. I enjoyed it and would recommend it to anyone with some curiosity on their and everyone's path as human beings.. which I guess should all of us!

Very educational and engaging

Educational and engaging. it gets a little difficult to follow, about 3/4 way through. But it ends well.

amazing book.

The book is amazing but I struggle with the narrator's performance. He is a bit monotoned.

Better than any thriller!

A fascinating, exciting and wonderfully narrated treatise ( in a way) that reads like a novel. It's absolutely brilliant and the topic is of current interest- a book for our times!
I wish there were more of these books. The narrator could be an audible reader if he wasn't so busy investigating all these interesting genome facts. 10/10

Great

If I have one quibble, it’s that I would have preferred the audiobook to have been organized into smaller chunks with actual titles beyond chapter numbers. That would have been easier to navigate.