James D. Watson looks back on his extraordinary and varied career – from its beginnings as a schoolboy in Chicago's South Side to the day he left Harvard almost 50 years later, world-renowned as the co-discoverer of DNA – and considers the lessons he has learnt along the way. The result is both an engagingly eccentric memoir and an insightful compendium of lessons in life for aspiring scientists. Avoid Boring People, is a quirky, original, wise, and infuriatingly un-put-downable blend of candid anecdotes and revealing insights into the life of one of the greatest scientists of the 20th century.

1. Manners acquired as a child (Chicago's South Side) 2. Manners learned while an undergraduate 3. Manners picked up in graduate school 4. Manners followed by the Phage Group 5. Manners passed on to an apprentice scientist 6. Manners needed for important science 7. Manners practiced as an untenured professor 8. Manners deployed for academic zing 9. Manners noticed as a dispensable White House advisor 10. Manners appropriate for a Nobel Prize 11. Manners demanded by academic ineptitude 12. Manners behind for readable books 13. Manners required for academic civility 14. Manners displayed to hold two jobs 15. Manners felt reluctantly leaving Harvard Epilogue

James D. Watson , Chancellor, Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory

`...with entertaining revelations...[and] interesting insights and anecdotes...' Financial Times |d 20/10/07