Word: loon
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...Loon's versatility and imagination as an illustrator which makes DNA for Beginners so entertaining and understandable. The range of his models is extraordinary. He draws on Auguste Rodin's Thinker, Andy Warhol's soup cans, Thomas Nast's cartoons of Victorian social commentary, and dozens of other artists' works. Caricatures, engravings, photographs, and a diagrams are all intermingled without ever clashing. Gregor Mendel's famous pea plants, study of which led to the discovery of genes, show up as Jolly Green Giants...
Even the scientists are portrayed with an astonishing diversity of styles; at different times Van Loon pictures Francis Crick and James Watson, discoverers of the double helix structure of DNA, as Bat. In addition, the comic book format in the only one in which the arcane and often ridiculous jargon of molecular biology makes sense...
Neither Edward Sylvester and Lynn Klotz, authors of The Gene Age, nor Israel Rosenfield, Edward Ziff, and Borin Van Loon, authors of DNA for Beginners, would necessarily recognize their kin-ship to populist mayor Vellucci. They have adapted to very different environments from Vellucci and from each other: The Gene Age is a clone from the hard-driving, earnest, and competent American biotechnology industry, while DNA for Beginners evolved from the genial and sardonic humor of the English academic New Left...
...simply the best introduction to genetics you can buy. Sylvester and Klotz write in The Gene Age that molecular biologists "stand out among scientists as intensely visual, as imaginative rather than analytic." DNA for Beginners puts this visual imagination into pictures. And what pictures they are! Borin Van Loon's clever and exhaustive illustrations should be the required text for anyone who wants to design educational graphics...
...inspired pulp serials such as "DNA gents" (which details the adventures of a handful of artificial people created by a giant corporation to do its dirty work.) Thoroughly researched, simply written, beautifully laid out, DNA for Beginners is in fact more serious than most popular science writing. With Van Loon's magnificent drawings to grab the reader's attention, the text can remain simple and straightforward and avoid the eye-catching exaggeration all too common in science journalism. Authors Rosenfield precision with an English brevity of expression...