No one knows how quickly we will decipher this "code of codes," the Holy Grail of human biology. Both the biotech industry, which has a considerable investment at stake, and scientists, who seek to alleviate suffering, to secure a place in history and to make their own molecular millions, want to move rapidly. Yet, facing a genome that contains thousands of genes, coding for a million or more different proteins (the biochemical powerhouses that do much of the work in making a human and guiding its functioning), they have a long road ahead. And we know even less about the proteome (the entire array of human proteins) than we do about the genome. That's why J. Craig Venter, president of the Celera Corp., who delivered the genome text to Science, told a science writer earlier this year, "We don't know shit about biology."

This strange moment, in which we hold the genetic keys but have no idea which doors they open, has given rise to a peculiar literature. Writers naturally want to tout the very real importance of their subject, but when it comes to what it all signifies, they don't have much solid data to work with. The result is a series of books that walk a tightrope between the minutiae of biochemical structures and mechanics, with their attendant technical vocabularies, and the most open-ended speculation about how a new era of genomics will affect humanity.

It's hard to single out any one of these books for recommendation. The authors have varying strengths and weaknesses in making the science accessible, and when it comes to sketching the outer reaches of scientific possibility, the human genome currently functions as a kind of Rorschach inkblot. Each author's beliefs and politics determine much of what he or she thinks the genome can tell us. And there are some big questions at stake here: When we fully understand the genome, will we know ourselves? Will this knowledge require a revolution in our understanding of what it means to be human? If so, do we even possess the cognitive capacity to grasp it? What limits can and should be drawn around what we do with that knowledge? And who shall decide?

The most recent addition to the shelf of books on the Human Genome Project (and the first account to include the completion of the project), "Cracking the Genome: Inside the Race to Unlock Human DNA" by Kevin Davies, is also the most disappointing. Davies is a clear and competent writer, and his book doesn't contain any inaccuracies or gross distortions -- all of which are great virtues in science writing. But for a book with the word "Inside" in its title, "Cracking the Genome" contains very little inside to speak of. Instead, it's an entirely derivative artifact, cobbled together from secondary sources, with only a few original interviews, none of them providing anything remotely resembling behind-the-scenes revelations.

Even a casual but consistent reader of the coverage of the genome project by the New York Times' Nicholas Wade or the Washington Post's Rick Weiss would spend $25 on Davies' book to learn nothing new. The author tacitly, if not guiltily, admits as much in his acknowledgments when he thanks Wade, "whose superb coverage of all aspects of this story has been invaluable." (We can only hope Davies has enough integrity to also share with Wade whatever fee he received to write the book.)

An accomplished science editor and writer with a Ph.D. in genetics from Oxford, Davies says his goal was "to capture the excitement, intrigue, mystery and majesty of the quest for biology's holy grail" and not to pen "the definitive record" of the genome project. In that, alas, he also fails. He breaks up his narrative of "the race" to sequence the genome with sections and even entire chapters that address subjects that, while often interesting, are only indirectly related to the project. Any approximation of excitement or mystery he generates is quickly dissipated by the padding.

Maya Angelou reads from "The Heart of a Woman"