Three years ago, my friends Robert P. George and Christopher Tollefsen (both senior fellows at the Witherspoon Institute and familiar to FT readers) published a short and powerful book called Embryo: A Defense of Human Life —a wonderful combination of scientific and philosophical rigor with accessible readability. Now a second edition has been published. In First Things , Fr. Richard John Neuhaus said of the first edition, “The persuasiveness of their carefully, even scrupulously, reasoned case is enhanced by the generosity with which they engage counterarguments . . . . George and Tollefsen are models of rational exactitude.” Just so. The book is one-stop shopping for those who want to think clearly and in a principled fashion about the issues surrounding embryo-destructive research. Not incidentally, Embryo is one of the few indispensable books you need in hand for arguing with your fellow citizens about abortion as well.
The second edition, published by the Witherspoon Institute, includes a new afterword addressing recent advances in stem-cell research, and an appendix that includes the review of the first edition by William Saletan in the New York Times Sunday Book Review, and George and Tollefsen’s reply to Saletan at National Review Online . You can buy the second edition of Embryo in paperback or e-book format from Amazon. More details here .
