A Brief History of Everyone Who Ever Lived: The Human Story Retold Through Our Genes

An Amazon Best Book of October 2017: Our obsession with where we come from has recently leapfrogged past the genealogy efforts of retired relatives to mail-in DNA tests that can provide the broad strokes of our genetic makeup for less than $100. But, as Rutherford points out in his intriguing exploration of humankind, DNA tests offer only a sensationalized peek at our roots, and the tangled, still-evolving truth is far more fascinating. Armed with his disarming British wit, Rutherford delves into the migration, interbreeding and isolation, and extinction of hominid branches that has shaped the modern human. Holes in our fossil record and the lack of DNA in fossils we’ve actually found still make genome research a challenge, yet the more we learn, the more we have to change our perception of who Homo sapiens are and what we’re made of. Challenging the simplistic thinking bolstered by the media, Rutherford adds both nuance and the thrill of excitement to viewing our species through a wider, stronger lens that can now see deep into our past. —Adrian Liang, The Amazon Book Review

• Who We Are and How We Got Here: Ancient DNA and the New Science of the Human Past
• She Has Her Mother's Laugh: The Powers, Perversions, and Potential of Heredity
• Humanimal: How Homo sapiens Became Nature's Most Paradoxical Creature_A New Evolutionary History
• Ancestral Journeys: The Peopling of Europe from the First Venturers to the Vikings (Revised and Updated Edition)
• Almost Human: The Astonishing Tale of Homo Naledi and the Discovery That Changed Our Human Story
• How Language Began: The Story of Humanity's Greatest Invention
• The Tangled Tree: A Radical New History of Life
• Creation: How Science Is Reinventing Life Itself
• Human Errors: A Panorama of Our Glitches, from Pointless Bones to Broken Genes
• The Gene: An Intimate History