The Life Project: The Extraordinary Story of Our Ordinary Lives

Helen Pearsonis a science journalist and editor for the international science journalNature. She has been writing forNaturesince 2001 and her stories have won accolades including the 2010 Wistar Institute Science Journalism Award and two best feature awards from the Association of British Science Writers. Based in London, she has a PhD in genetics and spent eight years withNaturein New York.The Life Projectis her first book, and was highly commended at the British Medical Association Book Awards in 2017.

An elegant mix of science and human drama,The Life Projectwas - by a considerable measure in my view - the best science book published this year
Eye-opening book, extraordinary insights into ordinary lives ... Part scientific narrative and part postwar social history, along with some fantastically cut-throat academic politics ... A very British success story
Fascinating, shocking, heartening ... The greatest scientific experiment in modern British history
Highly enjoyable ... Reading this book has reminded me of how much we owe to birth cohorts and their participants ... Delightful
A spellbinding account of the UK's pioneering cohort studies ... [A] cogent, persuasive book
Intriguing ... [A] fine, detailed book
The Life Projectis in many ways a very British story ... Absorbing ... A tribute to Helen Pearson's skill as a writer
Hugely engaging, and gives much to chew on ... the scientists are an irresistibly eccentric, passionate bunch
A highly readable, deeply informative book ... If you ever wondered whether the circumstances of your early life steered you along a particular path, look no further than this book ... [Pearson] does a superb job of bringing [the cohort studies] to life ...
Fascinating ... A cogent exploration of Britain's groundbreaking birth-cohort studies ...The Life Projectdoes a great service in bringing them and the people at their heart to life
Pearson has done a real service in explaining how wide-ranging these extraordinary and little-known studies have been
Persuasively argues ... the beauty and sheer vision of these longitudinal cohort studies