Mutants
On Genetic Variety and the Human Body
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Mutants
Narrated by:
Nigel Patterson
Buy Now for £12.99
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Narrated by:
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Nigel Patterson
About this listen
Stepping effortlessly from myth to cutting-edge science, Mutants gives a brilliant narrative account of our genetic code and the captivating people whose bodies have revealed it - a French convent girl who found herself changing sex at puberty; children who, echoing Homer's Cyclops, are born with a single eye in the middle of their foreheads; a village of long-lived Croatian dwarves; one family, whose bodies were entirely covered with hair, was kept at the Burmese royal court for four generations and gave Darwin one of his keenest insights into heredity.
This elegant, humane, and engaging book "captures what we know of the development of what makes us human" (Nature).
©2003 Armand Marie Leroi (P)2019 TantorPacked full of so much fascinating information.
The prologue and first 5 mins had me thinking boring, but once it got going it was excellent
Fascinating
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I enjoyed the performance of this book.
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the evidence of mutants in Roman and greek literature
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My only issue would be that the author's strong knowledge and background in genetics sometimes leads to an unintentional insensitivity. For example, the display of deformed children in museums besides animals was not to show that they are a part of nature (as the author optimistically sees it as) but because they were seen as subhuman or not human at all.
If you manage to miss this one on the Plus store, it's well worth a credit for sure. I'll be rereading it again in future
One of the most fascinating nonfiction books I've ever read/heard
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That said, Mutants is full of fascinating material. Leroi doesn’t just describe genetic mutations in scientific terms, but also approaches them historically and personally. He draws from diaries and letters, showing how people with visible differences experienced their lives. The most striking example to me was a man with dwarfism in the 1700s, reflecting on his role as an “entertainer” (or “entertainment,” depending on how one interprets it) in royal courts.
The book also tackles darker chapters of genetic research, including Joseph Mengele’s experiments and the survivors of his atrocities. These sections are harrowing but necessary; the history of genetics cannot be separated from its entanglement with racial violence and brutality.
Where the book falters most is in language and framing. Much of the terminology made me cringe, even when I tried to place it in the context of the early 2000s. For example, referring to intersex people as “hermaphrodites” (a term that was formally replaced in 2006) or calling them “sexually defective.” His chapter on gender, in particular, is deeply flawed; not only in its word choice, but in its assertions, such as implying that chromosomes determine sexual orientation, while seeming entirely unaware that gay people exist.
This is central to my critique: while Armand Marie Leroi explores genetic variation with scientific rigor, he offers very little reflection on the cultural forces that shape how we understand “mutations.”
In the introduction, he notes that everyone carries mutations somewhere in their DNA. So in a sense, we are all mutants. But beyond that, he doesn’t fully engage with why some variations are considered defective and others normal variation, or how those categories shift over time. His working definition—that a mutation is a defect when its effects are mostly negative—becomes shaky the moment he considers red hair, which by that definition would also be a “defect,” though he clearly resists calling it one.
Ultimately, I think this book is overdue for a revised edition. The science itself may still hold up (though I am not in a position to judge that fully), but the language and framing need substantial updating. The cultural conversations around gender, sexuality, and human diversity have moved on considerably since its publication, and a modern edition would need to reflect that.
Good narrator but severely outdated.
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