Twins: And What They Tell Us About Who We Are - Hardcover

Wright, Lawrence

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0471252204 ISBN 13: 9780471252207

Publisher: Wiley, 1997

Synopsis

"Twins threaten us because they undermine our notion of identity. We think we are who we are because of the life we have lived. We think we form the character and values of our children by the way we raise them.… But when we read about twins who have been separated at birth and reunited in middle age only to discover that in many respects they have become the same person, it suggests that life is a charade, that the experiences that we presume have shaped us are little more than ornaments or curiosities we have picked up along the way." —from the text Praise for Lawrence Wright’s Remembering Satan "Thoughtful and gripping." —Michiko Kakutani The New York Times "Stunning." —Walter Reich The New York Times Book Review "Catapults Wright to the front rank of American journalists." —Newsweek

About this title

About the Author

LAWRENCE WRIGHT is a staff writer for the New Yorker. His work has also appeared in Rolling Stone, the New York Times Magazine, and Texas Monthly. He is the author of three previous books, including In the New World: Growing Up with America from the Sixties to the Eighties; Saints and Sinners; and the critically acclaimed Remembering Satan. Mr. Wright received the National Magazine Award for reporting in 1993.

From the Inside Flap

Twins And what They Tell us about who we are How much are our character, intelligence, and lifestyle a result of our genes? In this compelling hook, award-winning journalist Lawrence Wright reveals how twins are helping to unravel these and other mysteries of human identity. Recent studies of twins have shaken the field of psychology to its foundation, revolutionizing our understanding of our own personalities. Because identical twins separated at birth share all the same genes, yet live separate lives, they offer a unique opportunity to test theories about the roles played by nature and nurture in shaping who we are. With its genesis in the author’s acclaimed New Yorker magazine article, Twins directly challenges many long-held beliefs. For instance, a series of groundbreaking studies of twins has shown that our genes play a much stronger role in shaping our identities than previously thought. Today, scientists can actually estimate what proportion of our intelligence, our personality, and our behavior is determined by inherited tendencies. Even our political orientation and our religious commitment, it turns out, are largely governed by our genes, Twins is filled with astounding stories of identical twins who have lived entirely separate lives but have an incredible amount in common: their hobbies, their mannerisms, their taste in music, food, and clothes, their experiences in marriage and divorce, their careers, their sexuality, even the names they’ve given their children. Perhaps even more surprising is the discovery that our family life has startlingly little effect on the type of person we become. The nongenetic factors that have the greatest impact on shaping our lives are not the way our parents raise us, or the kind of family in which we grow up, but our experiences outside our families. Introducing the latest findings in this heated area of research, Lawrence Wright presents a lively narrative that is at once engaging, provocative, and told with remarkable clarity. The ongoing and often volatile debate of nature vs. nurture has intrigued mankind for centuries. With Twins, Lawrence Wright provides a bold addition to current thinking, and a must-read for all those fascinated by the deepest mysteries of human nature and identity.

Reviews

YA-Twin girls are given up for adoption. One is doted on, the center of her upper-middle-class family's existence, the other is subtly rejected by her mother, and is not the center of her lower-class family's life. Which would most likely be the one described as, "tense, demanding...clinging to her blanket...crying when left alone"? Surprisingly, the description aptly describes both girls. Wright presents the conflicting, and often confounding results from twin studies done primarily over the last 50 years. Most people have heard the stories of separated twins (and one well-publicized case of triplets) being reunited as adults only to find astonishing similarities in their habits and personalities. The "nature versus nurture" debate has yet to be settled; if anything the studies add confusion to the mix. Wright offers summaries of research and the stories of researchers themselves; conclusions reached and discarded, and describes why twin studies fascinate us. The "shared" and "nonshared" environments of identical twins, and the differences in development that result from these experiences, offer new insight. The book serves up questions such as: "Do our genes determine our personality?" "How much, if any, effect do parents have on the personalities of their children?" These questions are not answered; readers are left to ponder the possibilities and draw their own conclusions.
Carol DeAngelo, Garcia Consulting Inc., EPA Headquarters, Washington, DC
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Twins and their implications are illuminated by a staff reporter for the New Yorker in this compelling, well-researched overview. Anchoring the reader in the historical mystique of twinship, Wright (Remembering Satan) documents humanity's low point in studying the special nature and possibilities of twins by recapping the horrific experiments of Josef Mengele. Wright proceeds to outline the newest research being conducted regarding twins, describing how separated-twin studies have thrown open the door on the nature-vs.-nurture debate. This is tricky ground fraught with political and social-policy land mines, but Wright does an admirable job of sorting through the differing research in a well-reasoned, clearheaded manner. He also provides a plethora of anecdotes of eerie similarities between twins separated at birth, such as personal habits and choices in spouses and careers. One notable British pair who were reunited later in life shared such puzzling traits and life events as frugality, marriage to men they met at local dances at age 16 and an avoidance of voting, except for a single instance when they worked as polling clerks. They even shared the habit of pushing their noses up, which they inexplicably called "squidging." Clear and compulsively readable, Wright's slim book sheds light on the allure of twinship: "The fantasized twin that we carry about in our minds is not only an idealized partner in the experience of being who we are, he is also a means of escape from the life we are living." Informative if brief, it shows us that even in identical lives there is no escape from the solitary experience of selfhood. For those seeking more information, Wright's extensive bibliography offers a treasure trove of leads.
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Wright, who wrote on twins for the New Yorker, presents more of his research for that article in a thought-provoking examination of twin studies and what we have learned from them. Separated-at-birth jokes are part of today's pop culture, but really, much of what we know about genetics comes from studying identical and fraternal twins who were reared apart. Wright shows how, historically, different interpretations of these studies have ended up creating trends in psychology or fueling social policy, and that researchers are still tracing the heritability of such things as IQ, addictive behavior, and criminal behavior through siblings, fraternal twins, and identical twins in attempts to resolve the nature versus nurture debate. With plenty of amazing stories about the similarities and differences of twins, Wright respectfully shows, too, how their special circumstance in life challenges our notions of individuality. A truly fascinating but sometimes spooky (Mengele's experiments with twins at Auschwitz figure among Wright's examples) study. Kathy Broderick

Edition details

• Publisher: Wiley
• Publication date: 1997
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0471252204
• ISBN 13: 9780471252207
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 208