The idea of heredity--that qualities of body and mind are somehow inherited from one's parents--has profoundly shaped many aspects of the human experience: from our attempts to understand variation in personality and intelligence, and popular attitudes to gender, race, and social hierarchy, to the methods employed to increase crop yields and the value of horses and cattle. In this book, the author traces both the technical study of biological inheritance and its ideological uses. He follows the concept of heredity from antiquity into a modern age of molecular biology in which a brave new prospect is emerging: the capacity to manipulate the human genome itself.

Souls, seeds, and chauvinism, 2500 BC-AD 400 -- Sex, seed, and sin in the medieval world -- Heredity in the early modern world, 1450-1700 -- Heredity in the Enlightenment -- Heredity in the 19th century -- Molecules and men -- New horizons -- Progress and possibility.