Science writer Jennifer Ouellette, an adopted child having no contact with her biological parents, had her genome sequenced as part of a journey to determine who she is—and why. Her entertaining tour of neuroscience, psychedelia and storytelling concludes that we result from nature and nurture in a multi-faceted interplay of genes, parenting and culture. “You can sequence my DNA,” she says, and map out “the velocity of every single subatomic particle that makes up my mind and body, but you won’t find my essence in any one of them alone.”
