The Song of the Cell

这不是一本从细胞结构讲起的生物学教科书。作者把镜头对准了发现细胞、改造细胞的人——那些在灰色地带疯狂试探、追名逐利、甚至无法区分人体实验对象与水族箱鱼类的科学家。读者反复提及的，正是这种「科学加故事」的写法：体外受精如何从四十年前备受争议走向今日见怪不怪，脑深部电刺激怎样把顽固抑郁症患者体内植入一块向脑细胞发送脉冲的电池。书中最引争议处，莫过于对贺建奎那段克制而精准的描写——有野心、不安分，却分不清实验对象与鱼。它适合这样一些人：不满足于记住名词，而想看清知识如何在失败、意外与人性里艰难诞生。读完你会获得一种打量现代医学的眼光：每一次疗法背后，都是具体的人在冒险。

Siddhartha Mukherjee is the author of The Gene: An Intimate History, a #1 New York Times bestseller; The Emperor of All Maladies: A Biography of Cancer, winner of the 2011 Pulitzer Prize in general nonfiction; and The Laws of Medicine. He is the editor of Best Science Writing 2013. Mukherjee is an associate professor of medicine at Columbia University and a cancer physician and researcher. A Rhodes scholar, he graduated from Stanford University, University of Oxford, and Harvard Medical School. He has published articles in many journals, including Nature, The New England Journal of Medicine, Cell, The New York Times Magazine, and The New Yorker. He lives in New York with his wife and daughters. Visit his website at: SiddharthaMukherjee.com.