"The synthetic and interdisciplinary nature of current research in human genetic history owes much to Cavalli-Sforza's efforts over the past 40 or so years. Although his most recent book, Genes, Peoples, and Languages, will make accessible and lively reading for nonspecialists, its greatest contribution may be the insights it provides into the scientific perspective and intellectual style of one of 20th-century biology's greatest synthesizers."—David B. Goldstein, Science

"There may be no contemporary scholar who has a more detailed understanding of human diversity or a more compelling vision of its unified history."—Edward Rothstein, New York Times

"Genes, Peoples, and Languages is . . . an intellectual biography—a complex portrait of a scientist capable of mentally juggling the particulars about everything and everybody, while remaining continually alert to grand designs."—Jared Diamond, New York Review of Books

"Cavalli-Sforza and his colleagues have now given historical anthropology sophisticated tools to look at human variation, and to read that variation as a 'text' of human history."—Patrick V. Kirch, Nature

"A thoroughly readable account of some of the most fascinating ideas around."—the New Scientist

"Effectively communicates complex ideas for a general audience without sacrificing the important technical details that underlie them; thus it should be of great interest to professional as well as lay readers."—Theodore G. Schurr, American Scientist

CHOICE Outstanding Academic Book for 2000