A Brief History of Everyone Who Ever Lived by Adam Rutherford

A Brief History of Everyone Who Ever Lived is written by Adam Rutherford. It is a non-fiction journey through genetics and what it can reveal about human history.

Synopsis

Framed as a story about the reader, this book explores how each person’s genome carries traces of our shared past. It presents human history as both individual and collective, shaped by events such as births, deaths, disease, war, famine, migration and sex.

Adam Rutherford examines what modern genetics can tell us about where we come from, and how historical knowledge can, in turn, inform our understanding of genes. Topics referenced include Neanderthals, murder, redheads, race, dead kings, plague, evolution and epigenetics, building a portrait of who we are and how we came to be.