Amazon.com (ISBN 0465073794, Hardcover)

The premise of Michael Crichton's Jurassic Park and the Steven Spielberg movie that it spawned (along with its sequel, The Lost World) is simple enough. Scientists extract dinosaur DNA remnants lingering in the stomachs of insects entombed in amber for millions of years, reconstitute them into complete copies of dinosaur DNA, and then "grow" dinosaurs inside the lab. It sounds intuitively plausible--if far-fetched--but could it really work? In this fascinating book, Rob DeSalle and David Lindley explain in detail how scientists might attempt this painstaking task and the challenges they would face. In the process, they provide a running tutorial on the techniques of genetic engineering and play spoilsport to the occasional sloppy science of the Crichton and Spielberg works. The result is thoroughly entertaining yet simultaneously enlightening.