pEndless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being, evolved, Darwin famously concluded iThe Origin of Speciesi, and for confirmation we look to...the guinea pig How this curious creature and others as humble and as fast-breeding have helped unlock the mystery of inheritance is the unlikely story Jim Endersby tells in this book. pBiology today promises everything from better foods or cures for common diseases to the alarming prospect of redesigning life itself. Looking at the organisms that have made all this possible gives us a new way of understanding how we got here--and perhaps of thinking about where we're going. Instead of a history of which great scientists had which great ideas, this story of passionflowers and hawkweeds, of zebra fish and viruses, offers a bird's or rodent's eye view of the work that makes science possible. pMixing the celebrities of genetics, like the fruit fly, with forgotten players such as the evening primrose, the book follows the un