In Deep Ancestry, Spencer Wells, the director of the National Geographic Society's Genographic Project, clearly explains the science behind the project — which is collecting DNA from a wide sample of the world's population in order to understand the evolution of the human genome — and also engagingly relates the stories of five of its volunteers.

From the publisher: "In the mid-nineteenth century, a Moravian friar made a discovery that was to shape not only the future of science but also that of the human race. With his deceptively simple experiments on peas in a monastery garden in Brno, Gregor Mendel was the first to establish the basic laws of heredity, laws from which the principles of modern genetics can be drawn.

Originally published in 1937 (before the discovery of the structure of DNA) and reissued by Columbia University Press in 1982 with a new introduction by Stephen Jay Gould, Dobzhansky's book advanced a comprehensive account of the evolutionary process in terms of genetics. By citing experimental evidence to support the theoretical arguments of Sewall Wright, J. B. S. Haldane, and R. A. Fisher, Genetics and the Origin of Species was one of the seminal works of the modern synthesis, prompting a surge of evolutionary studies throughout biology. A classic of enduring value.

The title of the prologue to Darwin in the Genome encapsulates the thesis of the book nicely: "Chance favors the prepared genome." The publisher writes, "Written by a molecular biologist at the forefront of genomics research, Darwin in the Genome is an exciting account of one of the hottest new theories in biology today: evolution by natural selection inevitably leads to strategic mutations.