#77 in Biography & memoir
The Code Breaker
- 560
- Pages
- about 10 h
- Reading time
- NYT bestseller · 8 weeks on the list, peaked at #1
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Our view
Walter Isaacson’s “The Code Breaker” tells the race to develop CRISPR gene editing as a well-told story, with science a lay reader can follow. Jennifer Doudna is at its centre, yet some readers find it less a biography than a portrait of the scientific community, with its rivalry over publications and patents and its moments of cooperation. Others single out the chapters on the morality of editing genes and the author’s even-handedness.
The view of the BookRank editors, written from readers’ ratings and comments. It does not affect the score or the book’s place in a ranking.
About the book
The Code Breaker: Jennifer Doudna, Gene Editing, and the Future of the Human Race is a non-fiction book authored by American journalist Walter Isaacson. Published in March 2021 by Simon & Schuster, it is a biography of Jennifer Doudna, the winner of the 2020 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for her work on the CRISPR system of gene editing.
Where the score comes from
The sources average 7.9 across 126 ratings — not yet many, so the reader vote carries 46% of the weight and the rest pulls toward the Biography & memoir average of 8.1. That is how 8.0 comes out.
| Source | Average | Ratings | Weight |
|---|---|---|---|
| Open Library | 7.7 | 7 | 6% |
| Hardcover | 7.9 | 119 | 94% |
Frequently asked
How long is The Code Breaker?
It has 560 pages — longer than 92% of the ranked books in Biography & memoir.
In this book
Themes this book shares with others — each leads to the best books on it.
If you liked this
Same shelf — Biography & memoir — with scores between 8.0 and 8.1, closest to this book.
