Erwin Schrodinger's 1944 classic What Is Life? is a small book that occupies a large place among the great written works of the twentieth century. It is said that it helped launch the modern revolution in biology and genetics, and inspired a generation of scientists, including Watson and Crick, to explore the riddle of life itself.
Now, more than sixty years later, science writer Ed Regis offers an intriguing look at where this quest stands today. Regis ranges widely here, illuminating many diverse efforts to solve one of science's great mysteries. He examines the genesis of...

"Bold and provocative... Regenesis tells of recent advances that may soon yield endless supplies of renewable energy, increased longevity and the return of long-extinct species."--New Scientist

In Regenesis, Harvard biologist George Church and science writer Ed Regis explore the possibilities--and perils--of the emerging field of synthetic biology. Synthetic biology, in which living organisms are selectively altered by modifying substantial portions of their genomes, allows for the creation of entirely new species of organisms. These technologies--far from the...

"Oh, the humanity " Radio reporter Herbert Morrison's words on witnessing the destruction of the Hindenburg are etched in our collective memory. Yet, while the Hindenburg--like the Titanic--is a symbol of the technological hubris of a bygone era, we seem to have forgotten the lessons that can be learned from the infamous 1937 zeppelin disaster.

Zeppelins were steerable balloons of highly flammable, explosive gas, but the sheer magic of seeing one of these behemoths afloat in the sky cast an irresistible spell over all those who saw them. In Monsters, Ed Regis...

It was home to Einstein in decline, the place where Kurt Goedel starved himself in paranoid delusion, and where J. Robert Oppenheimer rode out his political persecution in the Director's mansion. It is the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, New Jersey; at one time or another, home to fourteen Nobel laureates, most of the great physicists and mathematicians of the modern era, and two of the most exciting developments in twentieth-century science--cellular automata and superstrings.Who Got Einstein's Office? tells for the first time the story of this secretive institution and of...

Enter the gray area between overheated imagination and overheated reality, and meet a network of scientists bent on creating artificial life forms, building time machines, hatching plans for dismantling the sun, enclosing the solar system in a cosmic eggshell, and faxing human minds to the far side of the galaxy. With Ed Regis as your guide, walk the fine line between science fact and fiction on this freewheeling and riotously funny tour through some of the most serious science there is.