But Davies never asks what these advances might mean for our understanding of ourselves as a species or a culture. In fact, the innovative Ethical, Legal and Social Issues program of the National Institutes of Health genome project gets only a single paragraph near the beginning of the book. The Davies who is the editor of technical scientific articles repeatedly trumps the essayist and the thinker. Nevertheless, as a compendium of the major media stories on genetics and genomics over the past decade (with a bit of historical background), "Cracking the Genome" might serve as a useful guide for beginners.

If Davies avoids adopting any viewpoint, science writer Matt Ridley goes to the other extreme, putting forth a thinly disguised political treatise in "Genome: The Autobiography of a Species in 23 Chapters." "Genome" was chosen as one of the eight notable books of 2000 by the editors of the New York Times Book Review, which will no doubt give the curious novice the unfortunate impression that this is a definitive work on the subject. But what is most notable about "Genome" is that Ridley makes the scientific advances he writes about serve as mules for his beliefs, which are those stereotypically libertarian views to be expected in a former science editor and Washington correspondent for the Economist.

Nevertheless, Ridley can certainly write. His accomplished prose shines as he takes us through complicated biochemistry with exceptional ease. His four-page "Primer" on genetics (in the book's preface) is among the clearest and most succinct summaries of the subject available. Ridley has designed his 23 chapters to correspond with each of the 23 chromosomes that contain the human genome. He identifies a particular gene on each chromosome and uses it to illuminate an aspect of genetics and human life. So Chromosome 6 is entitled "Intelligence," Chromosome 15 is "Sex" and Chromosome 22 is "Free Will," and in each case Ridley shows how science connects intimately with human experience.

Not too surprisingly, though, in "Genome" human experience and genetics connect to demonstrate the truth of Ridley's political stance. For example, Chapter 18 (about Chromosome 18) tackles "Cures" and provides Ridley with the opportunity to hold forth on genetic therapy, which is necessarily a form of genetic engineering. That leads him to the topic of agricultural biotechnology and genetically modified organisms (GMOs), of which he declares, "The opposition to genetically modified crops, motivated more by hatred of new technology than love of the environment, largely chooses to ignore the fact that tens of thousands of safety trials have been done with no nasty surprises." He offers no footnoted reference to a peer-reviewed scientific paper discerning hatred as the basis for opposition to GMOs.

Pursuing the issue further, Ridley asserts that "the politicization of the issue [of GMOs] has had absurd results." He relates that a corporation abandoned a transgenic soybean project because the gene inserted into the soy came from Brazil nuts and therefore was allergenic to those susceptible. "This [abandonment] was despite the fact that calculations showed that the new soya-bean allergy would probably kill no more than two Americans a year," Ridley declares, "and could save hundreds of thousands worldwide from malnutrition."

Putting aside the question of the causes and cures for malnutrition -- opinions vary on the effectiveness of GMOs in alleviating it -- it's worth noting here that Ridley shows himself quite willing to jettison his unstinting rhetorical devotion to the individual when it conflicts with a technology or corporate policy that he favors. Ridley will not allow his much-championed free individual to stand in the way of Monsanto's unilateral decision to genetically alter the world's food. The two American individuals killed annually are a small and acceptable price to pay to allow corporate agriculture free rein.

"An absurd attitude to risk," Ridley later declares, regarding a similar case. Though he doesn't explicitly say so, Ridley accepts an actuarial evaluation of risk, like those performed by the insurance industry: The most unlikely possibilities, which tend to be the most catastrophic, are to be given the least consideration. Of course, many people who are mindful of the consequences of a "highly unlikely" Chernobyl- or Bhopal-type catastrophe suggest that when it comes to irrevocable genetic experiments, we might want to proceed on a more precautionary basis. Ridley, of course, would dismiss this as mere hatred of new technology.

Maya Angelou reads from "The Heart of a Woman"