A Simpler Life approaches the developing field of synthetic biology by focusing on the experimental and institutional lives of practitioners in two labs at Princeton University. It highlights the distance between hyped technoscience and the more plodding and entrenched aspects of academic research. Talia Dan-Cohen follows practitioners as they wrestle with experiments, attempt to publish research findings, and navigate the ins and outs of academic careers. Dan-Cohen foregrounds the practices and rationalities of these pursuits that give both researchers' lives and synthetic life their distinctive contemporary forms. Rather than draw attention to avowed methodology, A Simpler Life investigates some of the more subtle and tectonic practices that bring knowledge, doubt, and technological intervention into new configurations. In so doing, the book sheds light on the more general conditions of contemporary academic technoscience.

A Simpler Life approaches the developing field of synthetic biology by focusing on the experimental and institutional lives of practitioners in two labs at Princeton University. It highlights the distance between hyped technoscience and the more plodding and entrenched aspects of academic research. Talia Dan-Cohen follows practitioners as they wrestle with experiments, attempt to publish research findings, and navigate the ins and outs of academic careers. Dan-Cohen foregrounds the practices and rationalities of these pursuits that give both researchers' lives and synthetic life their distinctive contemporary forms. Rather than draw attention to avowed methodology, A Simpler Life investigates some of the more subtle and tectonic practices that bring knowledge, doubt, and technological intervention into new configurations. In so doing, the book sheds light on the more general conditions of contemporary academic technoscience.

"The stresses caused by the rapid growth of biological knowledge and capability will sorely test democratic societies in the coming decades. A first step in coping with these strains must involve expanding the discussion of the issues and the pace of change beyond the tiny circle of biologists and businesspeople now involved. Enter Rabinow and Dan-Cohen, whose investigations of Celera Diagnostics, a company at the forefront of research in human genetic differences, open the concepts, practices, and institutions of this revolutionary world to broader public scrutiny. Imagine if Tracy Kidder had written "The Soul of a New Machine" about a genomic diagnostics company, and informed it with deep, scholarly insight into science, business, and leadership, and you begin to get the scope of this book."--Dr. Roger Brent, Director and President of The Molecular Sciences Institute

"This fascinating book opens up a huge number of questions about how social scientists, anthropologists, or science studies practitioners write about science, scientists, technology, and innovation. It offers some of the most sophisticated and detailed accounts to date of the complexity, serendipity, and unpredictability of the very kinds of scientific innovation that are often described as being deliberately planned to serve specific interests or normative values. It is packed with very original data, its analytical style and argument are very provocative, and it makes a very timely contribution to the field. I have never read anything like it."--Sarah Franklin, author of "Embodied Progress: A Cultural Account of Assisted Conception"

"This impressive book provides an accessible, frank, behind-the-scenes look atwhat is really likely from the much-hyped hope-inspiring mapping of the genome. Led by the brilliant questioning and set pieces Rabinow and Dan-Cohen have devised, the reader gains, on the one hand, a heartening view of collective scientific talent, ingenuity, and cunning at work. On the other hand, through their interviews the authors show what is really different about this work of scientists--the talented work under the shadow of the profit motive, risk, opportunity, markets, and the brutality, sometimes, of the verdicts of their capitalist patrons. All of this is ingeniously explored in this chronicle, in an involving and engaging way. I gained much from reading it both as an anthropologist and as a middle-aged general reader, like many others, interested in the imminent promise of genetics for medical care."--George Marcus, Rice University, author of "Ethnography through Thick and Thin"

""A Machine to Make a Future" is an insightful and creative contribution to the literature--both scholarly and journalistic--on contemporary genomics. By 'experimenting' with narrative genre, the authors hope to generate different insights into the world of genomics and biotechnology than ones generally presented in existing accounts. They succeed at that goal, providing an account that is ethnographically rich and analytically open to a world whose structure, implications, and outcomes are very much in the making."--Nadia Abu El-Haj, Barnard College, author of "Facts on the Ground"