Rating: 
Summary: Political Correctness, the Antithesis of Science
Review: This book is an unfortunate example of what happens when political correctness collides with the real world of science. Olson has such a determinedly preachy style of writing about an important topic of science, race, that if cannot help but flat out insult and nauseate all but the most determined or naive readers. His central thesis is that race is not a biological construct (whatever that means), that there is no biological reality (whatever that means) to it, and thinking the contrary is the root cause of genocidal wars and all sorts of evil things. And did you know we are 99% chimpanzees too? And besides, race is only skin deep, and under our skin we are all alike... This is a book filled with the superficial propaganda of the multiculturalists, longing for peace through diversity, and thoroughly indoctrinated with the impotent ideology of the wishful dreamers. Race doesn't matter? Try telling that to the participants in a race war, or the parents of marriage age children, or Jews. If race doesn't matter, why does he think intermarriage is a good thing? If race is merely a "social construct" why are most of the new things about race being discovered in the laboratory, not by poll-takers and pundits? The science of race is rapidly progressing, using all sorts of exciting new tools and methods, with cooperative efforts expanding all across the world, and is being driven by new ideas and objectives impossible to even conceive of testing only a few decades ago. This is an amazing scientific endeavor, with immense importance for the proper understanding of man. Little of the excitement of this endeavor is communicated in the book, only the sound of an ax-grinding.
Rating: 
Summary: Interesting subject, a little too much sermonizing
Review: This book presents a very good overview of an interesting subject. For those who understand only basic genetics, like me, the author presents the subject matter in a manner that is easy to understand. Maybe a little too easy. I found myself wanting to gain a deeper understanding of the topic than is provided here. The author argues convincingly that the term "race" really has no real meaning any more, but he sermonizes on this topic far too much. He also drifts into related topics, like linguistics, for which he seems to have little expertise. And some of the later chapters, particularly the one on Hawaii, seems to have little to do with the subject matter except to provide a forum for more sermonizing. Aside from these distractions, I enjoyed most of the book, particularly the early chapters, and the knowledge I learned from the book has provided me with a different perspective on human history, and a better understanding of where we came from.
Rating: 
Summary: A politically correct explanation of human genetic diversity
Review: This book was advertised as one that debunks myths about human ancestry. What that means is that it systematically discredits the idea of races, arguing that all of us are the products of mixed genetic inheritances. That point is worth making once, but not over and over again as Olson does. After a few chapters, the reader feels as if he (or she) is being lectured by a politically correct journalist. In the end, the effect is counterproductive.
Rating: 
Summary: great book
Review: This book was interesting, easy to read, (don't need to be a scientist)and uplifting, especially with the recent amount of profiling accounts in the news. It is informative and easy to refer to when starting a discussion with young adults concerning evolution. I would recommend this book to anyone with an interest in how we got here and where we are going.
Rating:
Summary: A very interesting book
Review: This book was very easy and enjoyable to read, especially considering how much I learned from it. I didn't particularly like the section on linguistics - the evidence seems much too flimsy to form theories. Otherwise, it's a really neat book.
Rating:
Summary: Connecting to the past
Review: This book will appeal to the same audience that enjoyed Bryan Sykes' "Seven Daughters of Eve," which was largely about mitochondrial DNA patterns found in Europe. "Mapping Human History" is broader in scope, including Y chromosome patterns and many populations around the world. The book is engaging reading cover-to-cover, explaining the implications of modern genetic concepts such as haplotypes (specific DNA patterns inherited from one parent) and haplogroups (clusters of similar haplotypes which originated in different parts of the world). I also find myself using "Mapping Human History" as a reference for members of the GENEALOGY-DNA mailing list at RootsWeb. The great migrations of the past are not just an abstract concept to us. Genealogists now use Y chromosome and mitochondrial DNA tests to analyze family trees covering the past few hundred years, but our DNA also carries an echo of our "deep ancestry" from thousands of years ago.
Rating: 
Summary: Genes and Genealogy -- The Whole Human Race
Review: This is a delightful history of the migration of the whole human race based on what we now can read through DNA information - fortunately a great deal more than we have ever known before, and unfortunately still limited by the infantile state (compared to what it will become) of genetic knowledge. We can only trace migration through mitochondrial DNA, passed woman-to-woman, and Y chromosomes, passed man-to-man. Thus we are talking about the DNA of your mother's mother's mother's mother ... back to a particular change (mutation) and of your father's father's father's father ... This would not be enough to tell an individual much about the history of his or her own ancestors (unless you still archaically think that only a paternal-paternal lineage is "really" ancestral), but it is just barely enough to give an interesting overview of the mass migrations of peoples around the globe, and, more importantly, to demonstrate incontrovertibly that we are, indeed, only one "race" - that of humans. Ethnicities vary by gradations around the world, starting from a single source in Africa, and there are no definitively separate races. For me this story is fascinating because I have sought, just for my own enlightenment, other ways to trace the history of peoples before genetic research made even this preliminary sweep of information available to us, and the findings confirm those speculative ventures. My first efforts were through population mapping, and then, more successfully, through genealogical research. At first, I started collecting atlases of population history, and mapping the clusters of human habitation at each historical point. These were only reasonably accurate for relatively recent times, however, and still left the connections between civilizations completely unexplained. The other approach I took was even more fascinating and, surprisingly, many of the conclusions I drew, unscientifically, from genealogical research, are validated specifically by Olson in this book. I started off as an amateur genealogist (and still am decidedly amateur), but was daunted by the fact that one either runs into dead ends that one can't jump over (which is the case for most seeking ancestral data), or the multiplier effect of doubling the number of ancestors with each generation makes the information simply too extensive to catalogue. I soon found I was blessed and cursed with the latter problem - having fortuitously hit upon a royal ancestry and aristocratic lineages, where records were carefully kept in order to maintain inheritance rights, I soon found I couldn't handle all the files, and the information literally never, ever, ends. When computer genealogy and resources on the internet became available in the mid 1990's, I jumped back in, and were my eyes opened! Thinking my heritage to be British (mostly Scottish and English), it wasn't long until I was able to plug in ancestors from every single country of Europe, with, I think, not a single exception -- and even a little beyond (for example, Middle Eastern connections through Moors and Jews in Spain, and other links back as far as Middle Kingdom Egypt - don't ask!). At first, I thought this was simply because aristocratic families intermarried with aristocrats from neighboring countries, but I soon concluded, with Olson, that the fact that I found myself descended from Charlemagne was not a fluke or something to brag about - it must be that almost all Europeans are descended from him - it's just that most don't have the records. I don't claim that all of the records I have found can be verified (although for fun I did retain professionals to verify the royal lineage) -- much is based on unverifiable family lore and certainly people have intentionally falsified records with a strong incentive to do so when an inheritance is at stake. But rather than seeing the linkages as "my" ancestry, which some of it may not be, it has given me a vibrant picture of at least the entire continent of Europe as not split up into discrete ethnic units, but wildly overlapping generation after generation. Now that I have plugged in all the collateral lineages of recent years - intermarriages of cousins, siblings, etc. - my database of persons related to me by "blood" or marriage includes also people whose ancestors were from Asia, Africa, and most of the world. Olson says the entire population of the world is likely descended from Nefertiti - -- I checked. Yes! My database says she was my 114th great-grandmother. Now I know that while there is a high probability that the actual lineage in my database is erroneous, nonetheless she is indeed one of my (and your!) fabulous female forebears.
Rating:
Summary: Very good!
Review: This is a very good book to read but about 100 pages too long. The last two chapters could have been called Et Cetera and Ad Infinitum. An important insight is the lack of a distinct race. Its way too late to pour chlorine into the gene pool!
Rating:
Summary: Political Correctness butchers an interesting subject
Review: Through his political correctness, Mr. Olson spoils an interesting subject! His message, repeated over and over again is: As all mankind has been interbreeding time over time, we are all the same, and therefore racism is unfounded!
He does not seem to realise, what a dangerous road he is leading his readers down with this politically correct message: What if future science proofs, that his thesis is wrong, that there ARE substantial genetic differences between people - after all, this is a new science? ( I personally think, this is not so, but what does my belief mean...)
People would use his very argument to justify discrimination, with the same vigor Mr. Olson is using.
Non-discrimination must and does have a different, an ethical basis!
Rating:
Summary: Not bad quick overview, but too much political sermonizing
Review: Using ever improving molecular techniques, population geneticists study the history of extended families that are inbred to some degree. In other words, they trace the genealogies of racial groups. It's an inherently fascinating subject, and science journalist Steve Olson introduces it adequately in his new book, Mapping Human History. Written in the breezy style of a National Geographic travel-log, Olson's book is a quick read, but a little too superficial to be intellectually satisfying. Still, it's not a bad overview of an important subject. It would be better, though, without the recurrent political sermonizing. Unfortunately for population geneticists, their subject matter-race-is vastly unfashionable. So, the dean of the field, Stanford's great L.L. Cavalli-Sforza long ago developed the transparent subterfuge of defining the word "race" in the most ludicrous straw-man terms possible-as the classification of the human race into absolutely separate, never-overlapping, mutually exclusive categories. (Never specified is exactly who today believes such a thing: the Grand Kleagle's retarded brother, perhaps?) This straw-man definition allows him to deny that he's studying race, since by his definition "race" is impossible. Still, it allows Cavalli-Sforza to get back to work without being crucified for political incorrectness, so we shouldn't hold it against him. Unfortunately, Olson never seems to grasp that this is just pro forma boilerplate. In his book, Olson stops every few pages to tell you that there are no races that have been absolutely isolated genetically since the beginning of time because-you will be shocked, shocked to learn this-humans have been known to outbreed. (The reality of course is that for any human racial group, the inbreeding glass is both part empty and part full.) This makes Mapping Human History rather like a geology book that repeatedly admonishes the reader that the Earth is not flat. Another curious feature that Olson's book shares with many other contemporary writings about population genetics is the author's apparent longing for the abolition of his own subject matter via universal random interbreeding. Although animal and plant biodiversity is routinely celebrated as a supreme good, the conclusions of books on human biodiversity tend to treat it as a temporary evil that will soon be gone, and good riddance to it. It's as if that geology textbook ended with an ode to the blessed day when the Earth will plunge into the Sun, thus happily eliminating the need for a science of geology. In his final chapter, "The End of Race," Olson cites Hawaii as exemplifying the future of the human race. Still, not even Hawaii has achieved racial nirvana. Despite interracial marriage blurring the ethnic boundaries, the Native Hawaiians are now campaigning hard to have themselves declared a sovereign nation like American Indian tribes. On a vaster scale, Brazil exhibits the same tendency for class to correlate with color, and for the people at the bottom of the pile to agitate, not unreasonably, for race-based privileges for themselves. Currently, the government of Brazil is introducing racial quotas in response to black demands. Further, the mixing of races often leads to new races rather than to no races, such as the Angles and Saxons became the Anglo-Saxons.
This notion that the entire world will soon consist of one beige race is both highly popular and highly dubious. I see little statistical evidence to suggest that there will be significantly greater racial admixture in either Asia or Africa anytime in the 21st Century ... and that's where most humans will live. For example, the UN's best guess is that China will have 1,462 million people in 2050. The Chinese government shows no intention of ever admitting many immigrants, so the racial admixture level in China will not change perceptibly. The UN also projects that in 2050, India will have a population of 1,572 million. Almost all of these people will be racially descended from current Indians. Why? Well, who would want to move to India? It's a country that's more than full now, even before it adds another half billion Indians. Other populous countries that-trust me-won't be attracting huge numbers of immigrants from other continents include Pakistan (344 million in 2050), Indonesia (311 million), Nigeria (279 million), Bangladesh (265 million), the Congo (204 million), and Yemen and Uganda (102 million each). In other words, the absolute numbers of racially distinct East Asians, blacks, and non-European Caucasians will be larger in 2050 than today. Most of the growth in racial mixing will be restricted to regions where intermarriage has been a long tradition (primarily Latin America and some remote islands) or are immigrant magnets (presumably North America, Australia, and Western Europe). In essence, what is so enthusiastically anticipated is the admixture of people of European descent. Evidently, there is something uniquely, even superhumanly potent and evil about European DNA that means it must be diluted. Strikingly, the greatest enthusiasts for this view tend to be highly European themselves. (Olson, for example, is blonde.) This reflects that weird combination of racial self-loathing and racial egotism found in so many white intellectuals. Finally, I doubt that the beigeification of Europeans will proceed all that quickly. I don't think it's at all inevitable that Eastern Europe will open its borders to non-Europeans. Prudent statesmen in the ex-Communist countries will be wary of reproducing Western Europe's travails with hostile immigrant minorities, although the European Union will no doubt try to bully them into it. So, the odds are that-on a global scale-the current races will remain at the end of this century almost as distinct as they are today. Then, beyond 2100, DNA engineering and, perhaps, interstellar colonization will likely radically increase genetic differences among humans. So, while a better book than this one could certainly be written about race, you can feel confident that if you do invest the modest amount of time required to read Olson's effort, you don't have to worry that its subject matter will suddenly evaporate.
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