The Code Breaker: Jennifer Doudna, Gene Editing, and the Future of the Human Race

How it reads

The Code Breaker: Jennifer Doudna, Gene Editing, and the Future of the Human Race is biography (scientific biography, specifically), and its dominant mood is hopeful. Whatever it puts its people through, it believes things can get better. The pace is moderate — neither a page-turner nor a slow burn — so it holds up whether you read it in long sittings or short ones.

It's set in several locations, in the recent past, told in the third person, staying close to one character. Its central concerns are art and creativity, power and politics and identity. In weight it sits in the middle: substantial without being heavy going.

It stands alone, so there's nothing else you need to read first or after. The ending resolves happily. At 536 pages it's an ordinary novel's length. It's a mega-bestseller — the book everyone seems to have read.