Shortlisted for the Wellcome Book Prize 2017.

Includes, glossary, bibliographical references and index.

This is the story of one of the most beautiful and dangerous ideas in human history. It is the story of ourselves, and of our future.
The story of the gene begins in an obscure Augustinian abbey in 1856 where a monk stumbles on the idea of a 'unit of heredity'. It intersects with Darwin's theory of evolution, and collides with the horrors of Nazi eugenics in the 1940s. The gene transforms post-war biology. It reorganises our understanding of sexuality, temperament, choice and free will. This is the story driven by human ingenuity and obsessive minds.
And woven through The Gene is also an intimate history - of Mukherjee's own family and its recurring pattern of mental illness, reminding us that genetics is vitally relevant to everyday lives. Majestic in its ambition, and unflinching in its honesty, this is the story of a scientific idea coming to life - and a vision of both humanity's past and its future.