"This year's prize is about rewriting the code of life. These genetic scissors have taken the life sciences into a new epoch."
- Announcement of the 2020 Nobel Prize in Chemistry "Isaacson's vivid account is a page-turning detective story and an indelible portrait of a revolutionary thinker who, as an adolescent in Hawai'i, was told that girls don't do science. Nevertheless, she persisted."
– Oprah Magazine.com "
The Code Breaker marks the confluence of perfect writer, perfect subject and perfect timing. The result is almost certainly the most important book of the year."
- Minneapolis Star Tribune "Isaacson captures the scientific process well, including the role of chance. The hard graft at the bench, the flashes of inspiration, the importance of conferences as cauldrons of creativity, the rivalry, sometimes friendly, sometimes less so, and the sense of common purpose are all conveyed in his narrative.
The Code Breaker describes a dance to the music of time with these things as its steps, which began with Charles Darwin and Gregor Mendel and shows no sign of ending."
- The Economist "Isaacson lays everything out with his usual lucid prose; it's brisk and compelling and even funny throughout. You'll walk away with a deeper understanding of both the science itself and how science gets done – including plenty of mischief."
- The Washington Post "This story was always guaranteed to be a page-turner in [Isaacson's] hands."
- The Guardian "
The Code Breaker unfolds as an enthralling detective story, crackling with ambition and feuds, laboratories and conferences, Nobel laureates and self-taught mavericks. The book probes our common humanity without ever dumbing down the science, a testament to Isaacson's own genius on the page."
– O Magazine "Deftly written, conveying the history of CRISPR and also probing larger themes: the nature of discovery, the development of biotech, and the fine balance between competition and collaboration that drives many scientists."
– New York Review of Books "
The Code Breaker is in some respects a journal of our 2020 plague year."
– The New York Times
