Father to Son: Truth, Reason, and Decency
Father to Son: Truth, Reason, and Decency
- ISBN 13:
9781621820352
- ISBN 10:
1621820351
- Edition: 1st
- Format: Hardcover
- Copyright: 05/31/2014
- Publisher: Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press
List Price $30.93 Save
TERM | PRICE | DUE |
---|---|---|
Free Shipping Both Ways
Highlight/Take Notes Like You Own It
Purchase/Extend Before Due Date
List Price $30.93 Save $0.30
Usually Ships in 3-5 Business Days
We Buy This Book Back!
Free Shipping On Every Order
Note: Supplemental materials are not guaranteed with Rental or Used book purchases.
Extend or Purchase Your Rental at Any Time
Need to keep your rental past your due date? At any time before your due date you can extend or purchase your rental through your account.
Summary
Father To Son was first intended as a small, privately published collection of the writings of his father, James D. Watson, Sr. But when Jim Watson, Jr. began investigating his family history, what emerged was a more complex story - the chronicle of an archetypical American family from before the Civil War to Vietnam. Their history includes settlement in the Midwest, a 20-year association with Abraham Lincoln, a successful search for California gold, and bold but disastrous investments in the stock market. Watson, Sr.'s passion for ornithology led to a short-lived association with Nathan Leopold, who would later be sentenced for murder in the 1924 "trial of the century." His Oberlin friendship with Robert Maynard Hutchins, later President of the University of Chicago, began a family association with the University that continues today. The extended clan also included notable individuals like Watson, Jr.'s great uncle Dudley Crafts Watson - artist and teacher - who, for a time, raised a cousin, Orson Welles, the celebrated actor and director, and an uncle, William Weldon Watson, a physicist and participant in the development of the atomic bomb.
In this book, Jim Watson portrays these lives in a fascinating narrative, illustrated with previously unpublished photographs and period documents, that ends with an affectionate tribute to his father, a man of principle, decency, intelligence, and reason, from whom Jim Jr. learned liberal politics and incisive writing.
Always iconoclastic, in both science and literature, Watson has written his autobiography in installments, beginning with the now classic The Double Helix, followed by Genes, Girls, and Gamow and Avoid Boring People. Concluding The Double Helix, Watson portrayed himself as "...25 and too old to be unusual." Yet, in Father To Son, the latest of his unsparing self-examinations, Watson shows us that his heritage was remarkable after all and that "Most certainly I didn't emerge from nowhere!"