Inheritance: How Our Genes Change Our Lives--and Our Lives Change Our Genes

An Amazon Best Book of the Month, April 2014: In the last microsecond of the scientific age, we’ve figured out that our brains change throughout our life, adapting for good or ill based on lifestyle choices we make. But most of us haven’t yet realized the extent to which our genes also remain flexible, making Dr. Sharon Moalem’s Inheritance nothing short of revolutionary. Drawing on bleeding-edge science and sometimes heartbreaking stories of individuals he’s treated for rare genetic anomalies, Moalem explains how your DNA’s constant shape-shifting is “mediated and orchestrated by how you live, where you live, the stresses you face, and the things you consume.” Most fascinating (and terrifying, especially for parents) is evidence of how experiences--from trauma like bullying to times of happiness--can alter your genes so profoundly that the effects are passed down for generations. But his message is ultimately one of empowerment: we’re accelerating into a world where understanding your unique genetic inheritance will give you the power to eat, exercise, and seek medical treatment tailored to what your body really needs, where we’ll have “the opportunity to transform what we get and what we give,” altering the course of our destiny. --Mari Malcolm