The Babel Effect - Hardcover

Hecht, Daniel

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0609607294 ISBN 13: 9780609607299

Publisher: Crown Pub, 2000

Synopsis

Is violence a virus? Can your genes make you a killer? Why are we so willing to hurt each other? In The Babel Effect, the husband-and-wife research team of Ryan and Jessamine McCloud are charged with answering these urgent questions. Beginning as a neurological study of murderers on death row, their research explodes into an investigation into the biomedical foundations of human history. The quest takes them from prison cells to research labs to war zones throughout the world and forces them to doubt their most basic assumptions about the human species, about themselves, and about their marriage.
Combining systems theory with modern epidemiology, they soon learn that our propensity for violence resembles a contagious disease. But is the human carnage of the last hundred years an ancient plague or a new nightmare? Can they identify the cause and find a cure? As their discoveries reveal frightening secrets about multinational corporations, clandestine military programs, and millennial religious cults, they realize that finding the answers depends on a still more urgent and terrifying question: Can they survive the search?
When an unknown enemy steals their data and abducts Jessamine, the FBI investigation stalls, and Ryan realizes that it is up to him alone to find his pregnant wife. He soon finds that to learn where she is, he must discover who she is - and confront the question of whether we can ever really know the one we love.

About this title

About the Author

Before becoming a writer, Daniel Hecht spent twenty years as a guitarist, a musical career that included albums on Windham Hill Records, concerts at Carnegie Hall, and international performance tours. His first novel, <b>Skull Session</b>, was published throughout the world to broad acclaim. He now lives in Vermont.

From the Inside Flap

imaginative depth and narrative power of Michael Crichton's Timeline or Jurassic Park, <b>The Babel Effect</b> is an electrifying, thinking person's thriller based on cutting-edge neurological and genetic research. From the author of the widely acclaimed <b>Skull Session</b>, <b>The Babel Effect</b> artfully brings the speculative thriller to new literary heights.<br><br>Is violence a virus? Can your genes make you a killer? Why are we so willing to hurt each other? In <b>The Babel Effect</b>, the brilliant husband-and-wife research team of Ryan and Jessamine McCloud are charged with answering these urgent questions. Beginning as a neurological study of murderers on death row, their research explodes into an investigation into the biomedical foundations of human history. The quest takes them from prison cells to research labs to war zones throughout the world and forces them to doubt their most  basic assumptions about the human species, about themselves, and a

Edition details

• Publisher: Crown Pub
• Publication date: 2000
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0609607294
• ISBN 13: 9780609607299
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 438