Siddhartha Mukherjee writes hefty, serious popular science books: while the style and narrative is accessible, his work is always very well-researched. The Gene takes us through ancient ideas of how traits were passed down through generations, to the work of Darwin, through Watson and Crick (and Rosalind Franklin) and the many scientists and researchers who took the knowledge from there up to our era of human gene editing. The book closes with a useful manifesto outlining the truths we know about genes and some suggested principles to guide gene research ethically into the future. The book is seven years old by now so I expect some things have advanced but the focus on history and ethical questions means it's still a relevant read.

I appreciated the effort he put into, particularly, crediting other scientists who arrived at similar concepts at similar times, even though there were points where I felt like it was too much information for me as a non-scientist (I'm not even going to remember most of the names referenced in the main text, much less the footnotes).