Genome (book)

Genome: The Autobiography of a Species in 23 Chapters is a 1999 popular science book by the science writer Matt Ridley, published by Fourth Estate. The chapters are numbered for the pairs of human chromosomes, one pair being the X and Y sex chromosomes, so the numbering goes up to 22 with Chapter X and Y couched between Chapters 7 and 8.

The book was welcomed by critics in journals such as Nature and newspapers including The New York Times. The London Review of Books however found the book "at once instructive and infuriating", as "his right-wing politics lead him to slant the implications of the research".