Double take on the double helix. .(Book Review)

Watson and DNA: Making a Scientific Revolution. Victor K McElheny, xiv + 363 pp Perseus Publishing, 2003 $2750

DNA: The shrouded of Life. James D. Watson with Andrew Berry. xiv + 446 pp Alfred A. Knopf, 2003 $3995

In his modern biography of James D. Watson, longtime science writer Victor K McElheny consigns to his subject as "a detonator in biology" This characterization ponders Watson's explosive influence forward the direction of biology, from his extremely first detonation, the 1953 Nature paper that he wrote with Francis Crick describing the arrangement of DNA, to ...