Atheist and the Holy City: Encounters and Reflections

This collection of essays by a noted cancer researcher belongs to the tradition of science writing followed by Lewis Thomas, who contributes an introduction. Klein, a Hungarian-born biologist who fled Nazi persecution and has lived in Sweden since 1947, depicts science as a vast communal enterprise shaped by individual genius. He offers an intimate portrait of a fellow Hungarian Jew, atomic scientist Leo Szilard, who helped organize the Manhattan Project, then became disenchanted and tried to dissuade Truman from using the bomb. In another piece Klein contrasts Epstein-Barr virus, a ``wise old'' germ, with HIV--causative agent of AIDS--``the aggressive youngster who doesn't know what he's doing.'' Travel sketches jump from Finnish Lapland to Jerusalem, site of the moving title essay in which Klein posits altruism as a counterforce to ``selfish DNA's'' blind game of aimless reproduction. (Oct.)