Genome has been reviewed in scientific journals including Nature[1] and in medical journals such as the New England Journal of Medicine, where Robert Schwartz notes that Ridley speculates, "sometimes wildly".[7] The book is a "gambol" through the human chromosomes. All the same, Schwartz writes, the book is "instructive, challenging, and fun to read. I envy Ridley's talent for presenting, without condescension, complex sets of facts and ideas in terms comprehensible to outsiders."[7]
Lee M. Silver, reviewing Genome in The New York Times, argues that the book's theme is that each individual's genome contains "echoes" (Ridley's word) of their ancestors' lives. Silver calls Ridley "adamant" in believing that the use of "personal genetics" must not be left for doctors or governments to control, following on from the mistakes of eugenics a century ago, but that it's a fundamental human right to "see and use the messages in their own DNA as they see fit." Silver describes the book as remarkable for focusing on "pure intellectual discovery", providing "delightful stories". He suggests that even practising geneticists will gain a sense of wonder from the "hidden secrets" in the book.[2]
The biologist Jerry Coyne, writing in the London Review of Books, criticises Genome as "at once instructive and infuriating. For each nugget of science, Ridley also includes an error or misrepresentation. Some of these derive from poor scholarship: others from his political agenda."[3] For example, Coyne mentions Ridley's incorrect claim that "half of your IQ is inherited";[3] that Ridley assumes that the marker used by Robert Plomin, IGF2R, is the purported "intelligence gene"[3] that it marks; and that social influences on behaviour [always] work by switching genes on and off, something that Coyne states is "occasionally true".[3] Coyne argues that Ridley is an "implacable"[3] genetic determinist, denying the influence of the environment, and calling his politics "right-wing".[3] He calls the book's structure "eccentric"[3] and "bizarre",[3] the chapters matching the 23 pairs of human chromosomes, and notes that Genome is the third of Ridley's books that "tries to popularise" evolutionary psychology.[3]
The science writer Michael Shermer finds Ridley's technique "at once clever and delimiting: Each chapter represents a chromosome, for which he has chosen a single entity supposedly determined or influenced by that chromosome."[8] In Shermer's view, "It is a facile literary device to help readers get their minds around this illimitable subject, but I fear that it gives the wrong impression, disclaimers notwithstanding, that such things as intelligence, instinct, or self-interest are wholly located on that chromosome (and, therefore, genetically programmed and biologically determined)."[8]
