Travels in the Genetically Modified Zone

If you are interested in learning what's behind the headlines concerning genetically modified crops and foods, this is a good choice. The author is a professor of biological sciences at British Columbia's Simon Fraser University, and clearly knows what he is writing about. He traces the history of GM crops and presents the controversies concerning them in a balanced way. That balance is both the book's strength and weakness. Winston gives the pro- and anti-GM arguments equal time, and describes them in an even-handed way. However, the absence of a strongly stated point of view made the book less interesting, at least to me. Actually, Winston does have a point of view, which he reveals towards the end of the book. He thinks that the issues swirling around GM agriculture and foods can and should be resovled with a lot less rhetoric and more reason. Given the depth of feelings on the side of people and groups opposed to GM agriculture and foods, and the amount of money at stake for companies developing and pushing them, the author's hope for reasonable solutions seems admirable, but perhaps naive. Still, if you want a factual, balanced account of the GM issue to date, this book would certainly be useful.

Robert Adler, author of Science Firsts: From The Creation of Science to the Science of Creation (Wiley, 2002).