A River Divided
A formidable discovery in Israel leads to the birth of identical twins who are raised apart, unaware of each other's existence. The twins meet for a moment only in the Amazon, adversaries in the battle for the forest. As different artists would sculpt different statues from the same block of marble, different environments have produced different characters out of the same DNA.
Nature vs nurture.
It is a book that charters this critical time and the relevant question: who wins in the battle of nature versus nurture?
George
Paxinos AO
George studied at Berkeley, McGill and Yale and is Professor of Medical Sciences at Neuroscience Research Australia and The University of New South Wales, Sydney.
He has identified and named more brain areas than anyone in history (94 nuclei) and published 57 books—his first, The Rat Brain in Stereotaxic Coordinates, being the most cited publication in neuroscience and, for decades, the third most cited science book of all time.
His Atlas of the Human Brain received awards from the Association of American Publishers and the British Medical Association.
His atlases and concepts of brain organisation are used by most scientists working on the relationship between the brain and cognition, emotion, motivation and thought, including neurologic or psychiatric diseases such as Alzheimer’s and depression.
He was President of the Australian Neuroscience Society and the World Congress of Neuroscience.
He is a cyclist and environmental activist who has often been defeated by government. Twenty-one years in the making, A River Divided is his answer.
The story came to George when a friend suggested he visit Santiago de Compostela, where it’s said St James’ remains are buried. He thought of harvesting DNA from the remains to produce a clone, but then thought why not from someone far greater?
The research for his book took George to Jerusalem and Masada, The Vatican, the Brazilian Amazon and Buenos Aires where he learned the tango.
