Amazon.com Amazon.com Review (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.
(retrieved from Amazon Sun, 01 May 2011 16:38:11 -0400)
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Section 1: Mourn for your youth - I grew up with Jurassic Park. I obsessed so much over it that I devoured anything Michael Crichton in middle school. During a stay in the hospital, my mother and I read Jurassic Park and The Lost World to one another. The beginning chapters of this book all basically start off with: it's not possible, but assuming it were, this, this and this would go wrong. It completely ruins the suspension of disbelief.
Section 2: Get rid of the science curriculum in public schools - I learned more about Earth science, geology, biology and other natural sciences reading this than I did attending a math and science magnet school and studying engineering. It's incredible how easy the authors made complex concepts to understand.
Section 3: Let's punch Ian Malcolm - I always had a sneaking suspicion Malcolm was blowing smoke out of his ass; this book provided all the scientific and mathematical reasons that he really was an arrogant asshole. (