The Violinist's Thumb

Paganini, regarded as the world's greatest violinist, had freakishly flexible fingers.  Due to a genetic quirk, he could stretch and bend his thumbs and fingers into remarkable positions with ease whereas the rest of us who play (or attempt to play) the violin have to stretch and twist and pull our fingers, often to the point of discomfit and rarely with such easy dexterity.  What blessed his music career cursed the rest of his life.  Paganini's flexibility was probably due to Ehlors-Danos syndrome, a hereditary disease affecting the amount of collagen people can produce.  His tendons broke down and his lungs and colon stopped functioning properly, leaving him in pain and leading to his early death.

Sam Kean uses Paganini's story to title his follow-up to The Disappearing Spoon, but it's an aside in the story of genetics.  Kean traces the science from the first knowledge that parents pass on traits, through Mendel's pea plants (and the administrative and political headaches that interfered with his work), past horrifying experiments in cross-breeding primates, and to the success of the Human Genome Project.  Along the way, he outlines the conflict between genetics and Darwin and spends a few chapters with fruit fly scientists.  I particularly enjoyed that part, because the scientist, instead of giving their genes dry alphanumeric names, decided to be descriptive, giving us Tudor (leaving males childless), Lost in Space, and Cheap Date (for those of us with low alcohol tolerance).  Like his prior book, The Violinist's Thumb is accessible without being condescending and slips in the right amount of humor.