Stock up with our Shop Small Sale! Shop the sale
Hood by Luke Timmerman
  Send as gift   Add to Wish List

Almost ready!

In order to save audiobooks to your Wish List you must be signed in to your account.

      Log in       Create account
Collage of audiobooks

Shop Small Sale

Shop our limited-time sale on bestselling audiobooks. Don’t miss out—purchases support local bookstores.

Shop the sale
Phone showing make the switch message

Limited-time offer

Get two free audiobooks!

Now’s a great time to shop indie. When you start a new one credit per month membership supporting local bookstores with promo code SWITCH, we’ll give you two bonus audiobook credits at sign-up.

Sign up today

Hood

Trailblazer of the Genomics Age

$31.45

Get for $14.99 with membership
Narrator Xe Sands

This audiobook uses AI narration.

We’re taking steps to make sure AI narration is transparent.

Learn more
Length 11 hours 16 minutes
Language English
  Send as gift   Add to Wish List

Almost ready!

In order to save audiobooks to your Wish List you must be signed in to your account.

      Log in       Create account

Summary

Lee Hood did that rarest of things. He enabled scientists to see things they couldn’t see before and do things they hadn’t dreamed of doing. Scientists can now sequence complete human genomes in a day, setting in motion a revolution that is personalizing medicine.

Hood, a son of the American West, was an unlikely candidate to transform biology. But with ferocious drive, he led a team at Caltech that developed the automated DNA sequencer, the tool that paved the way for the Human Genome Project. He captivated scientists with his almost religious fervor for the new biology enabled by the machines.

Hood’s brilliance, rebellion, enthusiasm, and ego earned him detractors as well as admirers. His management style, once described as “creative anarchy,” alienated many. Some of his collaborators seethed, claiming he took too much credit. Fellow Caltech biologists charged that his empire building was out of control and ousted him as their chairman. A fraud in his lab made him consider, for a moment, quitting science.

Wooed by money from Bill Gates, Hood started over at the University of Washington, creating the world’s first Department of Molecular Biotechnology. Seven years later, his impatience for rules drove him to depart. He left at age sixty-one to start his own Institute for Systems Biology. Would he finally achieve the ultimate application of the genome project—personalized medicine?

In “Hood: Trailblazer of the Genomics Age,” journalist Luke Timmerman zeroes in on a charismatic, controversial personality. Never-before-reported details are drawn from the scientist’s confidential files, public records, and more than 150 interviews with Hood and his family, friends, collaborators, and detractors. The result is not just a revealing portrait of one of the most influential biologists of our time, but a deeply human look at science itself.

Collage of audiobooks

Shop Small Sale

Shop our limited-time sale on bestselling audiobooks. Don’t miss out—purchases support local bookstores.

Shop the sale
Phone showing make the switch message

Limited-time offer

Get two free audiobooks!

Now’s a great time to shop indie. When you start a new one credit per month membership supporting local bookstores with promo code SWITCH, we’ll give you two bonus audiobook credits at sign-up.

Sign up today
Stock up with our Shop Small Sale! Shop the sale