Customer Reviews

Hannah's Heirs: The Quest for the Genetic Origins of Alzheimer's Disease

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I consider this to be one of the scariest books I have ever read--terrifying becaust it is true. The people in this family are afflicted with an autosomal (not sex-linked) dominant gene for early-onset Alzheimer's Disease. I can imagine few things more nightmarish than growing up in a family in which you fear that you could start losing your mental faculties at age 42--as many of your relatives already have.

The scientific research and family genealogical history that made this book possible are fascinating to read about. This is a thoroughly riveting book.

The cover of this book gave me reason to expect that it would focus on the story of a family afflicted with Alzheimer's disease and the transmission of the disease through the generations. Instead, the majority of the book reads like a gigantic journal article. The author (a doctor) throws in a mere smattering of human interest here and there, but it's simply not enough to make the story interesting. I am not incapable of reading scientific writing, but page after page of it, as if it were a story in itself, is incredibly tedious.