How the Snake Lost Its Legs the leopard/elephant/camel got its spots/trunk/hump". Held's ability to captivate the reader's imagination compares to the mischievousness of Kipling's pourquoi stories," but the reader, "is also encouraged to extrapolate from general principles by the constant reminder that animals use a conserved set of developmental genes to construct their bodies." Martin finds evo-devo fascinating, "inherently colorful and well placed to fulfill the dual goal of etiological myths: explaining origins and causes while also stirring imagination and awe. Overall, the latest opus by Lewis Held Jr. fits that niche nicely, and shines by its ability to span essential concepts and empirical work with
Who We Are and How We Got Here Reich "seems a contradiction: Rising to the pinnacle of human genetics, he nonetheless exhibits incredible naiveté" in affairs such as when German scientists withdrew from a paper that seemed to them "uncomfortably close to pre-Nazi racial theories", or when Native American specimen donors wished to limit the use of their DNA. Hawks argues that science needs to help people to see the humanity of the dead ancestors, and finds Reich's approach potentially dehumanizing. Who We Are and How We Got Here Who We Are and How We Got Here is a 2018 book on the contribution of genome-wide ancient DNA