For a book about heredity, I must start my thanks with my family. My daughters, Charlotte and Veronica, have been the textbook definition of good sports over the past couple of years. They’ve put up with their father’s endless musings about how heredity has or hasn’t influenced who they are. Thanks also go to my brother, Ben, and parents, Marfy Goodspeed and Richard Zimmer, for our long conversations about our family history and for the light they have cast into the shadowy corners of my memory. Thanks most of all go to my beloved wife, Grace. This book would not have existed if not for her. She guided me along as I tried to tame a swirl of thoughts into an idea for a book, sustaining me through the low months when the writing seemed like it would never end, reading every page of the manuscript carefully to let me know what was unclear or unnecessary, and always reminding me of the life we shared beyond my computer monitor.
Deep gratitude goes to Stephen Morrow, my editor at Dutton, for the boundless energy and attention to detail he brought to this book, his vigor undiminished since he edited my earliest books, At the Water’s Edge, Parasite Rex, and Soul Made Flesh. I would also like to thank my agent, Eric Simonoff, for always reserving his enthusiasm for the ideas that he finds truly compelling and then giving his all to help me turn them into books.
I’m grateful to the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation for awarding me a fellowship for this book, allowing me to carry out more of the research necessary for such a wide-ranging subject. I’d also like to thank the editors at newspapers and magazines who enabled me to explore some of the topics that made their way into this book, including Michael Mason and Celia Dugger at the New York Times, and Michael Moyer and Thomas Lin at Quanta. My experience with getting my genome sequenced came about while I worked on a series of articles published by Stat, called “Game of Genomes.” I’m grateful to Jason Ukman, Jeff DelViscio, and Rick Berke for allowing me to head off into uncharted terrain for those pieces.
For assistance in research, transcribing, and fact-checking, I’d like to thank Helen Bellison, Nakeirah Christie, Asu Erden, Kevin Hwang, Jeremiah Johnston, Saatchi Kalsi, Haleigh Larson, Lauren McNeel, Neal Ravindra, Kevin Wang, and Maddy Zoltek. Thanks to Alice Colwell and Erika Richards for help in German translation. I’m very grateful to Jay Shendure at the University of Washington, who read through the entire manuscript for scientific accuracy, as did Graham Coop and members of his lab at the University of California, Davis: Doc Edge, Erin Calfee, Vince Buffalo, Nancy Chen, Emily Josephs, Sivan Yair, Kristin Lee, and Anita To.
Many people helped me get hold of information that went into this book. I’m particularly grateful to people who hosted me on research visits, especially Patricia Martinelli at the Vineland Historical and Antiquarian Society, as well as the staff at the Luther Burbank Home and Gardens in Santa Rosa, California.
I communicated with many people about the topics I explored in this book—either in person, over the phone, or by e-mail. Some of them also read over portions of my book and shared their responses. I’d like to thank them all for being so generous with their time and knowledge: Erol Akcay, Joshua Akey, Tracy Bale, Tracey Beck, Ethan Bier, Catherine Bliss, Russell Bonduriansky, Christine Brown, Tony Capra, Francisco Ceballos, Christopher Chabris, George Church, Declan Clarke, Nathaniel Comfort, Graham Coop, Ian Deary, Jack Dekkers, Brian Dias, Jill Doerfler, Joseph Ecker, Erle Ellis, Yaniv Erlich, Kevin Esvelt, William Foulkes, Keolo Fox, Valentino Gantz, Mark Gerstein, Simon Gravel, John Greally, Robert Green, Hank Greeley, Sean Harper, Joe Heinrich, Joel Hirschhorn, Greg Hurst, Insoo Hyun, Amiyaal Ilany, Anthony James, Anthony Jose, Fred Kaplan, Eimear Kenny, Johannes Krause, Leonid Kruglyak, Sushant Kumar, Amanda Larracuente, Iosif Lazairidis, Zachary Lippman, Isabelle Mansuy, Robert Martienssen, Christopher Mason, Iain Mathieson, John McCutcheon, Maurizio Meloni, Elizabeth Murchison, Alondra Nelson, Faranza Parshankar, Diane Paul, Nathan Pearson, Joseph Pickrell, Ron Pinhasi, Danielle Posthuma, James Priest, Jonathan Pritchard, Erik Puffenberger, Jennifer Raff, David Reich, Stuart Ritchie, Noah Rosenberg, Beth Shapiro, Adam Siepel, Robert Sparrow, Kevin Strauss, Sonia Sutti, Kim TallBear, Ali Torkamani, Sici Tsoi, Tobias Uller, Peter Visscher, Christopher Walsh, Eske Willerslev, and Melinda Zeder.