TWINKIND

A heavily illustrated volume about twins and popular attitudes toward them.

Uncommon but not rare, twins have created a stir throughout history, writes British researcher and writer Viney, himself a twin and author of Waste: A Philosophy of Things. In the past, twins were mostly viewed as a curse: killers of the sick, harmers of livestock and crops, embodiments of evil. As the author chronicles, “common sense” made it obvious that women who bore twins had had sex with two men, so they were considered debauched and their children tainted; twin infanticide has been documented everywhere. On the positive side, twins were sometimes viewed as harbingers of good fortune, and they frequently played heroic roles in creation myths. A single egg that divides before fertilization gives rise to identical twins with identical DNA, but about two-thirds of twins are grown from two different eggs and are as genetically varied as ordinary siblings. In the modern age, twins have appeared in paranoid fiction by E.T.A. Hoffmann, Charlotte Brontë, Dostoevsky, and Robert Louis Stevenson. Viney’s most compelling pages explore twins in the arts, especially in theater and films familiar to many readers, but he also covers scientists’ investigations of twins’ real-life experiences and attributes. These chapters deliver a painless if often lurid education into such areas as criminal identification, eugenics, racism, and psychology. Studies of identical twins, especially those raised separately, became central to the debate on the influence of nature versus nurture in human development. Viney often focuses on controversial studies and the belief that identical twins have a paranormal connection, expressing mild skepticism but only after providing many vivid anecdotes. Other authors delve more deeply, but it’s unlikely that any match his spectacular illustrations, which occupy as much space as the text.

A visually fascinating study featuring dazzling photographs and artwork.