The Best Books About Biotechnology

Here's my biotech reading list. I'd love your help fleshing it out.

I've spent the last few weeks creating a syllabus for myself on the world -- people, techniques, theory, history -- of biotechnology. I've talked with some scholars, accepted some Amazon recommendations, and done some rummaging around in bibliographies, but I'm only getting started. I thought I'd list my recent acquisitions here in hopes that you'll help me flesh my little self-taught course out. You know how to get a hold of me: comments here, @alexismadrigal, or amadrigal[at]theatlantic.com. 

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(Oh, and I'm also looking for journals and blogs that I should be keeping an eye on.) 

Right now, I'm pretty heavy on the theoretical and anthropological investigations of biotechnology. I'd like more basic texts on the techniques and some more scientist/technologist accounts of their own work and how it's shaped their thinking. If you can't tell from the readings, what I'm most interested in is the nature of life from the perspective of the people who manipulate it. 

Here's the list, sorted alphabetically by author last name:

Life as Surplus: Biotechnology and Capitalism in the Neoliberal Era by Melinda Cooper

Dolly Mixtures: The Remaking of Genealogy by Sarah Franklin

Invisible Frontiers: The Race to Synthesize a Human Gene by Stephen Hall

How We Became Posthuman: Virtual Bodies in Cybernetics, Literature, and Informatics by N. Katherine Hayles

Alien Ocean: Anthropological Voyages in Microbial Seas by Stefan Helmreich

Genentech: The Beginnings of Biotech by Sally Smith Hughes

Refiguring Life by Evelyn Fox Keller

Secrets of Life, Secrets of Death: Essays on Language, Gender, and Science by Evelyn Fox Keller

This article available online at:

http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2013/03/the-best-books-about-biotechnology/273683/