The Cell: A Molecular Approach
The Biology of Death: Origins of Mortality. By Andre Klarsfeld, Frederic Revah, and Lydia Brady (Translator). Ithaca, New York: Cornell University Press; 2003, 211 pp. $29.95. Written by two accomplished French neurobiologists and translated by an experienced scientific and technical translator, this book explores various ideas concerning death in living organisms. The book focuses on the reasons an organism stops living and takes a scientific approach toward understanding the causes of death. The book describes in detail the varying lifespans of different organisms and even discusses statistical analyses regarding the probability that an organism will reach a certain age. The simple fact that certain organisms age at seemingly different rates is a key issue in this book. The authors point out examples of organisms with life spans ranging from minutes for some insects to millenniums for certain types of trees such as sequoias. A key concept addressed in this book is the idea that death is something that occurs inevitably in all living organisms whether by being killed by another organism or by natural aging. They also touch on current research on aging in yeast (Saccharomyces cerevisiae) and examine the possible links between death and sexual reproduction. The authors do an excellent job in looking at death from all aspects of nature whether in yeast or mammals, which is why this book will have something for everyone. Anyone who has studied science will find this book an easy read. The translation of this book was done relatively well, but there were some grammatical errors found in the book that could have been easily located if edited more thoroughly. All in all, this book takes the sometimes morbid subject of death and does a good job of analyzing it from an objective scientific viewpoint.