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

When Jennifer Doudna was in sixth grade, she came home one day to find that her dad had left a paperback titled THE DOUBLE HELIX on her bed. As she sped through the pages, she became enthralled by the intense drama behind the competition to discover the code of life. Driven by a passion to understand how nature works and to turn discoveries into inventions, she would help to make what the book’s author, James Watson, told her was the most important biological advance since his co-discovery of the structure of DNA. She and her collaborators turned a curiosity of nature into an invention that will transform the human race: an easy-to-use tool that can edit DNA. Known as CRISPR, it opened a brave new world of medical miracles and moral questions.

Week of May 2, 2022

Paperback releases for the week of May 2nd include THE NIGHT SHE DISAPPEARED, an edge-of-your seat thriller from Lisa Jewell about a young couple’s disappearance on a gorgeous summer night, and the mother who will never give up trying to find them; Jean Hanff Korelitz's THE PLOT, a propulsive read about a story too good not to steal, and the writer who steals it; THE FOREST OF VANISHING STARS by Kristin Harmel, an evocative coming-of-age World War II story about a young woman who uses her knowledge of the wilderness to help Jewish refugees escape the Nazis --- until a secret from her past threatens everything; Ash Davidson's DAMNATION SPRING, a stunning novel about love, work and marriage that asks how far one family and one community will go to protect their future; and THE CODE BREAKER, Walter Isaacson's gripping account of how Nobel Prize winner Jennifer Doudna and her colleagues launched a revolution that will allow us to cure diseases, fend off viruses and have healthier babies.