"The Fly Room is much more than just a history of genetics--it's a tale of the kaleidoscopic collisions that make up science: of intertwining lives, interests, and fates of the very real and all-too-human geneticists behind the science we all think we know so well. If genetics is the story of what makes us who we are, The Fly Room is the story of the fascinating, flawed, and fortunate people who first established genetics as a field of scientific inquiry." - Luis A. Campos, Baker College Chair for the History of Science, Technology, and Innovation, Rice University
"This book offers an empathic, deeply personal reading of major achievements in human genetics based on the author's extensive archival research. The breadth of historical material is impressive and so is the author's knowledge of the existing scholarship on the history of science, genetics, Darwinism, and eugenics, to which he too has contributed significantly for the past two decades." - Marius Turda, Oxford Brookes University
"The Fly Room offers a dynamic and collective biography of several key architects of the Modern Synthesis, set against a scientific and political backdrop shaped by the rise of the 'reform' eugenics movement. The book examines Darwinism, eugenics, and 'Lysenkoism' not as isolated issues but as interconnected facets of the broader nature/nurture debate of the 20th century." - Francesco Cassata, University of Genoa
"Some of the most important discoveries in modern biology sprung from the work of Thomas Hunt Morgan and his band of students and researchers who developed the fruit fly into the genetic workhorse that it remains today. This is the first truly complete story of the crucial events that took place between Darwin and the discovery of DNA, told as a most engaging history full of remarkable characters who have too long remained in the shadows." - Stuart Firestein, Professor of Biological Sciences, Columbia University
