Genealogy Books - The Journey of Man: A Genetic Odyssey

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Spotlight customer reviews:
Customer Rating:

Summary: DNA based human migration
Comment: A very nice book if one is interested in understanding how DNA analysis is being used to trace human
migration and from where it started. This whole subject is about tracing back whatever factual
information can be used to reconstruct our traceable origins.

It is a hard read in
certain areas especially if you are mostly illiterate about DNA and its link with genealogy.

Customer Rating:

Summary: Too dumbed-down
Comment: This was a major letdown. While one might be somewhat entertained by it, you won't come away from it
with any understanding of anything. The writing is vague and the scientific methods are hardly
mentioned. I suppose the author or his editors were afraid of scaring people. Here's the entire
description of restriction enzymes: "...biochemical techniques can generate DNA fragments of a
particular length based on their sequence." That's it. He manages to take a few sentences to vaguely
describe gel electrophoresis, but of course never bothers to use the term "gel electrophoresis."
Don't bother with this one.

Customer Rating:

Summary: Great Companion to the PBS Video!
Comment: I came to know about Dr Wells' work through the PBS documentary and I made sure that I got it on
video so that I could slowly digest the information in it. I was amazed at the findings that we all
have a common ancestor from Africa and as recently as only 60 thousand years ago! As the
documentary stated at the end, any notions of racism and bigotry based on race after this discovery
is just plain wrong and parochial and the implications is that we have no excuse to try and
segregate but instead it makes more sense to integrate and work to a common cause: the betterment of
the human race.

Still, as any movie is constrained by time, I was sure that there must
have been more to this than was presented and so I decided to get the book as well. I wasn't
disappointed; there are loads more information here that added to my understanding from what I
learned from the video. Although it is around 200 pages long, I found it to be an easy read for the
layman like myself with little technical jargon used that is not fully explained.

Wells
has got a talent for simplifying complex ideas for lay understanding. If you liked the PBS
documentary and want to understand further then this book is the one to get.

Highly
recommended.

Customer Rating:

Summary: really interesting
Comment: I really got a lot out of this book--it's a bit of a dry read at times, and some of the genetic
science gets a little bit heavy (particularly in the beginning), but I learned a lot from reading. A
lot of quotable new ideas in here that I wanted to talk about with friends immediately--the
extinction of Neanderthals, the early advent of modern humans in Australia, the difference between
human and animal as appreciated by a simple grammatical structure, and the ability to track lineage
from placental and Y chromosom DNA being some things that spring immediately to mind. Worth dipping
into.

Customer Rating:

Summary: Loved it!
Comment: I absolutely loved this book! I think the Genographic Project is amazing. Sadly I wish more people
could accept Evolution. It's just hard for some to break away from indoctrination.

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