Best New Books: October 2009

Image 1 of 4

Science
Today we are pretty certain that all living creatures on this planet are descended from a single ancestor. The evidence … is that the genetic code is universal, all but identical across animals, plants, fungi, bacteria, archaea, and viruses. The 64-word dictionary, by which three-letter DNA words are translated into twenty amino acids and one punctuation mark, which means “start reading here” or “stop reading here,” is the same 64-word dictionary wherever you look in the living kingdoms.
—The Greatest Show on Earth: The Evidence for Evolution by Richard Dawkins (Free Press, $30)