Pharmacogenomics may sound a bit daunting, but Nathaniel Comfort at the Center for History of Recent Science at George Washington University is having no trouble reading up on genomics and pharmacology for his next project, the history of genetic medicine. He鈥檚 tackling Pharmacogenomics: The search for individualized therapies edited by Julio Licinio and Ma-Li Wong (Wiley, 2002) and Pharmacogenomics edited by Werner Kalow, Urs Meyer and Rachel Tyndale (Marcel Dekker, 2001). They report back from the front line of what could be a major transformation of medicine, he says.
For fun he鈥檚 reading two books that explore science鈥檚 role in modern life and the nature of creativity: Einstein, Picasso by Arthur I. Miller (Basic Books, 2001) and Servants of the Map by Andrea Barrett (Norton, 2002), a splendid set of stories linked by the main characters鈥� passion for science.
And he鈥檚 been dipping into Helen Vendler鈥檚 The Art of Shakespeare鈥檚 Sonnets (Harvard, 1999), 鈥渁 remarkable piece of scholarship that cracks open Shakespeare鈥檚 dense, enigmatic poems as though they were geodes鈥�, he says.
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