Rating: 
Summary: Impressively little content.
Review: One doesn't learn a lot about evolutionary genetics from this book. When the author talks about how statisticians arrive at a result he does a really poor job of explaining the calculation for a layman. He presents almost nothing at all, just stating results. The book contains a lengthy list of results from many different fields. Most people want to know a lot more about how the various quantities are deduced, even a newspaper article goes more in depth. Science via inductive logic is a little sketchy, but you get the impression that the author doesn't understand that what he studied in grad school is inductive. One receives the impression that the author doesn't question much of anything at all. This is a book about everything he learned as a post-doc, all the people that he met, and all of their theories. But, I don't think that many people will take anything away from The Journey of Man - it lacks the substance that readers of layman's science books desire.
Rating: 
Summary: One family ¿ sibling rivalry continues
Review: Self proud humans with basic understanding of biology cannot even imagine that 50-60,000 yrs or up to 150,000 (or more) ago we all came from one man and one woman who mated, until geneticists revealed the undeniable evidence (our mitochondria DNA or Y chromosome DNA sequences) showing that we all are related. Yes, no matter what race or whomever you are looking at on this earth, tall or short, dark or pale, charismatic or repulsive, civilized or primitive, violent or gentle, we all share the same ancestors. Just like any species. Will knowing that we all share the same ancestors make us respect or understand each other more? Just think of the cases of sibling rivalry, it is unlikely that humans will buy much of the fact that we share the same ancestor so that we would live more peacefully. Nonetheless, science does provide a powerful tool to understand ourselves. Perhaps the next step is to unravel those genetic traits that render us accumulate hate so easily and manage this destructive behavior more easily.
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Summary: The Y Chromosome Chips In
Review: Spencer Wells has penned a welcome addition to the genetic history of humankind. The mitochondrial DNA story is well known by now, and his analysis of the travels of the Y chromosome fills in an important gap. For me, this book drives the final nail in the coffin of the multiregional theory of human evolution.
Although it's eminently readable, it's helpful if the reader has taken a semester course in genetics - and not one that's 30 years old, as it is in my case. I found that a second, slower reading increased my understanding of the concepts. The illustrations are particularly useful and I bookmarked some important ones to serve as a constant reference during my reading.
As a student of human evolution and pre-history, Wells' book is a welcome addition to my library of "how we came to be what we are."
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Summary: A Brilliantly-told History of Man's Genetic Past
Review: Spencer Wells has written the definitive popular account of the search for man's origins and his populating of the planet. Not just a popularizer, but an actual scientist who has worked in the new discipline of population genetics, Wells presents complicated scientific findings with surprising precision and clarity, and still avoids the common mistake of most popular scientific accounts by never overstating his claims. The book begins with a short historical sketch of the scientific notions of man's beginnings. Did Homo sapiens evolve independently in several different parts of the globe, as some anthropologists believed, or do all men have a common beginning, a single root? After surveying the early scientific opinions, Wells looks at what genes have to say about man's origins and how he populated the planet. Wells covers some archaeological finds and, later in the book, uses linguistics to buttress his genetic evidence, but he primarily looks at DNA patterns found today in local populations believed to have existed in their areas for millennia. The results are fascinating. An early coastal migration from Africa to Australia, for example, is hypothesized to take into account remnant black populations spread throughout Southeast Asia, a relatively early settlement of Australia compared to other places on the globe, and the lack of archaeological finds, which suggests the migration stayed close to the water's edge and was later swallowed up by the rising oceans after the end of the ice age. But it is not the results that make this book so much as Wells' brilliant, short descriptions of the science behind the answers. He has a concrete way of describing everything from the statistics behind DNA sampling to why the conceptual Adam and Eve did not co-exist at the same time.
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Summary: Best book of it's kind!
Review: Spencer Wells, unlike Bryan Sykes who wrote Seven daughters of Eve, is not an egomaniac. Wells mostly sticks just to the facts. Included in JOM are some excellent bits on the Aryan YChromosome being present in Indians of India to Eastern Europeans. Plus, that India-Indians also often possess the Y chromosome of Neolithic Middle Eastern ancestry that nearly all European have in their bodies as well. Other good facts in JOM too. Thanks Spencer.
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Summary: Way better than Sykes's egotrip Seven Daughters of Eve
Review: That's for sure. Author Spencer Wells doesn't blab endlessly about himself in it like like Bryan Sykes did about himself in SDOE. Wells just sticks more to Genetic science facts. This book also is the reverse of SDOE in that that book, when it wasn't about Sykes (which was rare), concerned the mitochondrial DNA inherited from mothers. This better book by Wells concerns the Y-chromosome inherited from fathers. There is info info on the Aryan dna y chromosome, which does scientifically exist. Also, Wells mentions rarely-known fact that Indians of India posses some aryan Y Chromosomes plus they (like nearly all europeans) have the Mid-East Y chromsome from the neolithics who left Syria around 10,000 years ago trekking to various part of the wortld. Great book all around (Wells's book that is, not Sykes's).
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Summary: THIS WILL BLOW YOUR MIND!
Review: This book is a companion to the amazing documentary that was on PBS a month ago. Revealing that all mankind which is not surprising comes from one tribe in Africa and that particular tribe is still living on till this day. How one part of that African tribe traveled through India, China, Australia to Alaska and North America. What is amazing is Spencer Wells does genetic tests in each land area to find men(they carry the chromosome)who are a direct linkage to the African tribe. It is amazing research that will leave you speechless, finally genetic proof that we ARE ALL RELATED!
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Summary: An eye opener
Review: This book popularizes the results of the latest research on the history of homo sapiens over the past 200,000 years from the traces this history left in the DNA of living people. While I have never been particularly interested in molecular biology for its own sake, I found its use in prehistoric detective work fascinating. I used to think of this kind of forensics as relying exclusively on fossilized bones and artifacts dated with carbon 14. This book made me realize that every cell of our body contains a detailed historical record, and that an astonishingly precise history of our species can be inferred from comparisons of these records between individuals and populations. This book opened my eyes on something new, and for this I am indebted to the author.
But the book is not perfect. It lacks illustrations, and the few illustrations it does have are of poor quality. Besides tree diagrams of chromosome markers, there are a few world maps that seem to be grayscale renderings of color originals in which essential information was color-coded. Diagrams of polymorphisms or the principle of dHPLC, for example, would have improved readability. I also have quibbles with the author's use of vocabulary. He calls the common male and female ancestors to all living human beings Adam and Eve, which is confusing because his Adam and Eve have nothing to do with the biblical characters. They were not the first humans, and his Adam lived 100,000 years later than his Eve. In addition, terms like "polymorphism" are not defined clearly and seem to be used with different meanings throughout the book. Other terms, like "marker" or "microsatellite diversity" are not explained. I also don't see much value in the quotations by authors ranging from Gloria Steinem to T.S. Eliot at the head of each chapter, that don't have obvious connections to the subject.
With these few reservations, I recommend it to all non-biologists who are curious about our origins.
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Summary: Just Incredible
Review: This book will blow you away. In clear, easy-to-follow language, with helpful analogies, Wells describes a scientific and geographical journey wherein, by means of DNA analysis, he and his fellow scientists tracked the contemporary "Y" chromosome from two common ancestors in Africa to the DNA of every living human being. Unbelievably, there really was one "Adam" and one "Eve" -- although they lived more than 100,000 years apart -- whose descendants left Africa about 40,000 years ago and, over 2000 subsequent generations, were the origin of us all. The understanding that we are all related -- cousins many thousands of times removed, if you will -- may not have any immediate effect on politics and social relations, but it does put our human conflicts into a different context, as well as blast away most genetically-based theories of race. Although cultures may differ in many respects, and human beings may subscribe to different value and belief systems, we really are, genetically, one human family. I read this book cover-to-cover in one day, and found it fascinating, astonishing and inspiring. Kudos to Wells and his crew. Also, those of you who have kids who may be too young to follow the science in this book should try the video.
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Summary: Journey of Man - An Epic
Review: What an exciting subject! A theory about the dispersal of humanity through the Earth, all who descended from one man -Adam. Honestly presented by a very qualified geneticist. Good humor and "down to Earth" insights throughout. Semi technical yet understandable. Written with the passion of the author, who has analyzed DNA from blood around the world in theorizing that all of mankind originated in Africa some 2000 generations ago. The theory accounts for EVERYBODY alive today. The author accepts the evidence as it comes in, controversial or not - for instance he finds that female genetic markers predate Adam making "Eve" older than "Adam," not exactly biblical.... Who knows: Maybe Well's "Adam" in the book was really Noah.... A good read.
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