"The genes that build America." The Guardian.


From the discovery that presidential hopeful Barack Obama is descended from white slave owners to the realisation that the majority of black Americans have European ancestors, a boom in 'recreational genetics' is forcing America to redefine its roots. Paul Harris pieces together the DNA jigsaw of what it really means to be born in the USA.

... ''I walk up to him, and he immediately shuts the trunk, and he calls out, This is my car.' "

Sure it is. Colombo pulls out his radio and calls for backup. ''271 to control," he says, but before he can say anything else, the suspect lunges at him, knocking the radio from his hands.

... The taller, bulkier suspect is throwing roundhouse punches and jabs, his long hair flapping in his face. He is grabbing Colombo in places that few men like to be grabbed.

A pudgy guy in a blazer walks past the fight and keeps going. An MBTA bus drives past. The woman behind the camera is yelling for help into a phone.

What's most amazing is Colombo himself, the consummate professional even under attack. He can be heard on the tape constantly shouting, ''Stop resisting and get on the ground."

''If I was in a street fight as a kid, I would have done it differently," Colombo said. ''I would have been more violent. But as a cop, to make an arrest, we have to use the minimum amount of force required. We can't go over."

Colombo finally gets the exhausted suspect in a headlock. He tells some onlookers they could help if they want, and several men rush over and grab various limbs while Colombo places the guy in cuffs.

At the end of the tape, the restrained suspect, later identified as 40-year-old Ruben Delgado of Dorchester, is still kicking up a fuss, telling people he needs water. Colombo says to him: ''Negative, sir. Sit there and relax."

A brilliant and important exercise in exposing the limitations of received opinion, this book presents to the lay reader and specialist alike an exhaustively argued case that animals have multiple shades of sexual orientation.

The book is broken into two sections, the second containing species "portraits" detailing recorded homosexual/transgendered behaviors. The main portion of the book sets out to reveal and, indeed, revel in the documented evidence to date that some 450 species engage in both sustained and occasional "gay," "lesbian" and transgendered pairing, parenting and play. Animals (both heterosexual and homosexual) also rape and divorce, commit "child" abuse and infidelity and can be lifelong celibates.

Human claims to uniqueness in this arena are shown to be increasingly difficult to maintain. The overall effect is to detonate the myth that animals are solely driven by heterosexual reproductive urges, as Bagemihl, a biologist, amasses evidence with case study after case study of species ranging from whiptail lizards to bottlenose dolphins, flamingoes, vampire bats and giraffes.

But his book offers more than a zoological laundry list. Biologists who have long classified these behaviors as taking place only in "abnormal" conditions or as "pseudo-copulation," "mistakes," "practicing" and domineering sexual bullying are frequently shown to be willfully ignoring behavior that does not reflect their own worldview or accepted scientific thought.

What might so easily have turned into a tub-thumping activist tract hitched to the need for acceptance of homosexuality among humans is instead elevated to a hugely inclusive, celebratory biological interpretation of the world. Bagemihl convincingly overturns previous inviolable "truths" that scarcity and functionality are the prime agents of biological change, and advances instead the idea that abundance and extravagance ("biological exuberance") are just as crucial to the mosaic of life. Numerous illustrations by John Megahan.