Jonathan Weiner explores scientific theories on the potential for human immortality, examining the ideas of scientists and thinkers who believe that aging is a curable disease such as Aubrey de Grey, and discussing the history of the search for human longevity with examples from art, science, and literature.

Stephen Heywood was twenty-nine years old when he learned that he was dying of ALS -- Lou Gehrig's disease. Almost overnight his older brother, Jamie, turned himself into a genetic engineer in a quixotic race to cure the incurable. His Brother's Keeper is a powerful account of their story, as they travel together to the edge of medicine. The book brings home for all of us the hopes and fears of the new biology. In this dramatic and suspenseful narrative,...