Date: May 24, 2025
Author: Susan Weiss Liebman
Genre: narrative nonfiction memoir, science genetics
Each chapter begins with a quote, I found this one to be quite profound: “Each player must accept the cards life deals him or her. But once they are in hand, he or she alone must decide how to play the cards in order to win the game.” -Voltaire
Fun fact P. 198, ‘It cost a billion dollars in 2004 for the Human Genome Project to complete the first sequence of a human genome… By 2024, it cost under $500 to sequence an individual human genome.’ Wow, that is mind boggling.
To think that when Mz. Weiss Liebman began her impressive career she was one of the first women educators at university level. In fact, her first day on the job, another professor (male, obviously) assumed she a student and that she needed to take a seat at the back of the class, only for her to self-assuredly explain she was indeed to stand at the front.
Mz. Weiss Liebman went on to achieve many accolades in her career as a geneticist. Her contributions didn’t end with first finding the gene mutations, (which must be like a needle in a field of haystacks). This work became invaluable in protecting people with her familial gene mutation from sudden death.
In conclusion, even the next day, I still am marveling at this book. What a deep love Mz. Weiss Liebman must have for her family, shown through dedicating her life’s work towards finding a possible cure for what ails the ones she loves. Not only that, but once she did crack the code, so-to-say, she hunted down her less immediate family as well, informing them of the mutation found in their genes and what that should mean to them, and still going a step farther by sitting down with pen and paper to share her findings on an even grander scale through writing this book.
One last thing… If I am what I read, then today I am studying to become a geneticist… Have a lovely day!