Genes, Peoples, and Languages
Jared Diamond says, "It would be a slight exaggeration to say that L.L.  Cavalli-Sforza studies everything about everybody, because actually he is 'only' interested in what genes, languages, archaeology, and culture can teach us about the history and migrations of everybody for the last several hundred thousand years."  Cavalli-Sforza has been the leading architect of a revolution (even a paradigm shift) in human genetics since the 1960s. Because of his work, geneticists no longer think that the human species is divided into color-coded races. Cavalli-Sforza's studies of the transmission of family names in Italy, of the relationship between human genes and languages, of migration and marriage, are the benchmarks of our biological self-understanding.Genes, Peoples, and Languagesis less personal than Cavalli-Sforza's preceding book,The Great Human Diasporas: The History of Diversity and Evolution.  And it is far more compact than the magisterialThe History and Geography of Human Genes(availableabridgedfor those who prefer not to buy books by the pound). Instead, it is a an excellent overview of Cavalli-Sforza's many-faceted approach to human history and our present condition. It is that rarest of achievements, holistic without any trace of mushy-mindedness.--Mary Ellen Curtin--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.