THE MAMMAL IN THE MIRROR

A clear, thorough, and challenging bioliteracy primer from David Barash (Making Sense of Sex, 1997, etc.) and his daughter Ilona. Of course, one person’s biology primer is another’s quagmire, calling up every manner of high school science anxiety. And while the Barashes are on a mission to educate the masses in the workings of the body as lucidly as possible, they can’t avoid descriptions of “harnessing the power of an electrochemical gradient of hydrogen ions across the mitochondrion’s inner membrane.” To their credit, by the time readers get to that sentence, they will easily grasp its import—if they have been paying attention. For as the authors make their way from the nuts and bolts of cell structure to the DNA strands that become chips off the old block, through reproduction and brain chemistry and the greater ecological web of life, our understanding of biology is explicated by stages and presented as gratifying instances of detective work. Nor are they afraid to say contemporary science hasn’t all the answers, or even all that many. What led to multicellular bodies? To consciousness? To concealed ovulation? Dunno. The material is presented not selectively but processionally, and it can be a beautiful thing to watch as the writers follow the daily routine of a fat cell or the act of a neural transmitter jumping a synaptic cleft, or debunk prejudices crippling valuable aspects of sociobiology. It can also be daunting. It isn’t easy to grab and juggle all the ATPs, HIVs, DNAs, ADHs, and CCKs that get tossed the reader’s way, despite the claim that “you don’t have to be a rocket scientist or even a biological scientist to enjoy a basic familiarity with today’s biology.” For those who can match them step for step, the Barashes are good Sherpas, elegantly and expertly guiding readers up the gnarly, precipitous slopes of human biological science.