# How Life Works: A User's Guide to the New Biology - Hardcover

by **Philip Ball** (Author)

**"Bold and intriguing."--_Wall Street Journal_ \- "Penetrating. . . . Provocative and profound."--_Publishers Weekly_ (starred review) - "Offers plenty of food for thought."--_Kirkus Reviews_ (starred review)**

**"Ball's marvelous book is both wide-ranging and deep. . . . I could not put it down."--Siddhartha Mukherjee, author of _The Song of the Cell_ and the Pulitzer Prize-winning _The Emperor of All Maladies_**

A cutting-edge new vision of biology that will revise our concept of what life itself is, how to enhance it, and what possibilities it offers.

Biology is undergoing a quiet but profound transformation. Several aspects of the standard picture of how life works--the idea of the genome as a blueprint, of genes as instructions for building an organism, of proteins as precisely tailored molecular machines, of cells as entities with fixed identities, and more--have been exposed as incomplete, misleading, or wrong.

In _How Life Works_, Philip Ball explores the new biology, revealing life to be a far richer, more ingenious affair than we had guessed. Ball explains that there is no unique place to look for an answer to this question: life is a system of many levels--genes, proteins, cells, tissues, and body modules such as the immune system and the nervous system--each with its own rules and principles. _How Life Works_ explains how these levels operate, interface, and work together (most of the time).

With this knowledge come new possibilities. Today we can redesign and reconfigure living systems, tissues, and organisms. We can reprogram cells, for instance, to carry out new tasks and grow into structures not seen in the natural world. As we discover the conditions that dictate the forms into which cells organize themselves, our ability to guide and select the outcomes becomes ever more extraordinary. Some researchers believe that ultimately we will be able to regenerate limbs and organs, and perhaps even create new life forms that evolution has never imagined.

Incorporating the latest research and insights, _How Life Works_ is a sweeping journey into this new frontier of the life sciences, a realm that will reshape our understanding of life as we know it.

### Author Biography

**Philip Ball** is a freelance writer and broadcaster whose many books on the interactions of the sciences, the arts, and the wider culture include _Bright Earth_, _Curiosity_, _Patterns in Nature_, _How to Grow a Human_, _The Modern Myths_, _The Elements_, and, most recently, _The Book of Minds_, all also published by the University of Chicago Press. His book _Critical Mass_ won the 2005 Aventis Prize for Science Books. Ball is also the 2022 recipient of the Royal Society's Wilkins-Bernal-Medawar Medal for contributions to the history, philosophy, or social roles of science. He trained as a chemist at the University of Oxford and as a physicist at the University of Bristol, and he was an editor at _Nature_ for more than twenty years. He lives in London.

**Number of Pages:** 552

**Dimensions:** 1.22 x 9.22 x 6.42 IN

**Publication Date:** November 07, 2023

## Details

- **Price:** 29.0 USD
- **Vendor:** Books by splitShops
- **Type:** Books
- **Tags:** Books by splitShops, Shopify Collective

## Variants

| Variant | Price | Available |
|---------|-------|-----------|
| Default Title | 29.00 USD | In stock |

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- How Life Works: A User's Guide to the New Biology - Hardcover

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