“Stevens’s whirlwind tour of bioworlds past and present becomes the proverbial tour de force by managing to make meaningful stays almost everywhere in between—Bt corn, designer babies, GMOs, Henrietta Lacks, patenting, plasticity, stem cells, terrorism by virus, wearable technologies, and more. At each stop, we’re also expertly guided to scholarship that can push readers further into this fascinating but challenging terrain. Biotechnology and Society is both authoritative and friendly, and it will be eagerly inserted into syllabi for teachers everywhere who are generating a fresh population of historically grounded, scientifically informed,  and politically savvy students capable of critically questioning their way into our collective biofuture.”

Mike Fortun, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute

“Written in a clear and accessible style, Biotechnology and Society will be an important text for classes devoted to biotech, science, and technology studies, as a primer for scholars just moving into the subject area and for the intellectual community interested in the variety of different perspectives that Stevens collects together.”

Nathan Crowe, University of North Carolina Wilmington

"The main strength of the book is its broad coverage of developments concerning biotechnology...Topics covered include the debates over owning and patenting life, genetically modified foods, eugenics, the human genome project, genetic testing, assisted reproductive technologies, stem cells, designer babies, and bioterrorism. Refreshingly, there’s also a section on biotechnology and art. In all of these areas the author raises interesting questions of how scientific and technical developments in biotechnology engage important social and cultural issues, such as the economic and political divide between the rich and the poor, racial discrimination, privacy, and a new type of colonialism."

Technology and Culture