Eric J. Vettel is the Bancroft Postdoctoral Fellow in United States History at the University of California, Berkeley, and Founding Executive Director of the Woodrow Wilson Presidential Library in Staunton, Virginia.
Eric Vettel ably illuminates the political economy of science at the end of the 1960s, including the impact on attitudes among younger bioscientists of the demand for relevance in research; and he provides a riveting on-the-ground account of how in the Bay Area that response helped give birth to the region's biotechnology industry. This is a valuable book, deeply researched and altogether readable. -Daniel Kevles, Yale University The wide range of economic, social, cultural, and personal factors chronicled in the book-particularly the interaction between the institutional and personal-gives the reader a deep appreciation of the subtle and complex forces at work during this tumultuous period in U.S. history... [Biotech] offers a provocative early look at an enterprise that is sure to receive much more scholarly analysis in the years to come. -American Historical Review Compelling, well-documented, and important... [Biotech] helps us begin to see some of the complex questions that we will have to address in deciding how much and which basic research, applied science, and technological application we want. -BioScience This is one of those rare books... What is passed over or hinted at in other histories is here explored in depth and with the skill that comes from a sympathetic familiarity with his subject and subjects... The only history of the field I will keep and recommend. -Nature Biotechnology