Coming in at nearly 500 pages, the book dives into the essence of life and the heady world of genomes and genetic coding, or what Isaacson calls 'the third great revolution of modern times,' following the atom, and the bit which led to the digital revolution. For the uninitiated — those folks who cannot tell their DNAs from RNAs — understanding this new frontier in science can be a bit daunting.

In The Code Breaker [Isaacson] reprises several of his previous themes—science, genius, experiment, code, thinking different—and devotes a full length book to a female subject for the first time. Jennifer Doudna, a genuine heroine for our time, may be the code breaker of the book’s title, but she is only part of Isaacson’s story.

Author Walter Isaacson is one of the nation's premier biographers.

... marvelous.

... enthralling and panoramic.

Mr. Isaacson explains CRISPR in terms readers can understand and its role in eliminating diseases.

Whether it’s arcane biochemistry or the ins and outs of patents, Isaacson lays everything out with his usual lucid prose; it’s brisk and compelling and even funny throughout. You’ll walk away with a deeper understanding of both the science itself and how science gets done—including plenty of mischief.

The Crispr story is made for the movies. It features a nail-biting race, more than its fair share of renegades, the highest prize in chemistry, a gigantic battle over patents, designer babies and acres of ethical quicksand. It presents a challenge to a biographer, however, who has to pick one character from a cast of many to carry that story.

Writing gracefully and with authority, Isaacson frames Doudna’s life story with that of James Watson, who used model-building and photographs to propose the double-helix structure of DNA in 1953.

... strange, hybrid.

[Isaacson] profiles the brainy, good-natured, competitive and thoughtful Doudna, who became fascinated with biological science as a girl. At the same time, he defines and explains the complicated science behind the gene-editing tool CRISPR.

Prerequisites almost are required – biology 101 and chemistry 101 would be helpful in grasping the roles of introns and cryocooling crystals, as examples.

By taking a holistic look at what got Doudna, and one of her friends and co-researchers, onto the virtual stage for the 2020 Nobel Prize ceremony, Isaacson uncovers and demystifies the stigma around high level thinking and biologic research in The Code Breaker.

A magisterial biography of the co-discoverer of what has been called the greatest advance in biology since the discovery of DNA.

Biographer Isaacson depicts science at its most exhilarating in this lively biography of Jennifer Doudna, the winner of the 2020 Nobel Prize in chemistry for her work on the CRISPR system of gene editing.