Book Note

Moira A. Gunn. Welcome to Biotech Nation: My Unexpected Odyssey into the Land of Small Molecules, Lean Genes, and Big Ideas. New York: American Management Association, 2007. 258 pp. $24.95.

Reviewed by Eleanor Goldberg

In her first book, the host of the weekly radio program Tech Nation breathlessly recounts her recent immersion into the world of biotechnology. Interweaving anecdotes, scientific explanation, interviews with scientists and executives, and personal commentary, Moira Gunn draws back the curtain on an industry that by some accounts makes up one third of the world economy. She frames the biotech picture with her own narrative of a scrappy journalist after the lead, and at times her personal anecdotes take the story off track. In her chapter on in vitro fertilization Gunn offers an account of her own amniocentesis; one could think of a few ways this might relate to the global biotech industry, but Gunn does not connect the dots. The reason for including the story of her hostile encounter with BBC staff members is still less clear, and Gunn’s explanation—that it offers a lesson in failure, which in biotech is fodder for innovation—is tenuous. Her good humor lifts her out of her funk, however, and we get an engaging, lighthearted account of the author’s impressions of the science, economics, politics, and personalities at play in the biotech nation and planet.