Not sure how this one got on my netgalley as I don't really do non-fiction. I am not interested in it at all.

Bring Back the King: The New Science of De-Extinction by Helen Pilcher

A book by an award-winning journalist with an Elvis fetish delivers vignettes on the death—and potential rebirth—of Earth’s animal species with a tone that is at once heartbreaking, hopeful and funny.

Humor is a bonus in this debut title by Pilcher, who holds a doctoral degree in cell biology but has made a living as a science journalist and comedian for more than a decade. She describes the nascent science of bringing species back from extinction through genetic engineering, and does it through a series of lively stories. Some are childhood memories. Others are stories of researchers who are working to make de-extinction a reality, or the species that are going extinct today. Though Pilcher has carefully researched and documented the science, her lighthearted tone and fast pace make the book fly by. For instance, Pilcher doesn’t just describe the extinction of the dinosaurs. Instead, she tells the story of Stan, a 7-ton 20-year-old T. rex, on the morning 65 million years ago when he awoke to the sound of a meteor the size of Mount Everest hitting the Earth. Later, she gives advice on how to escape from a T. rex, should Stan’s kind be “de-extincted”: “Bigger animals find it harder to run uphill… so run for the hills and when you get there, run up them in a zigzag pattern. T. rex, with its bulk and sticky-out head and tail, was not quick on the turn.” The book is replete with Elvis puns, and Pilcher explores the challenges—both technical and ethical—that prevent scientists from bringing her favorite rock and roll icon back from the dead. But she reserves the most reverent passages for an animal on the brink of extinction: “As I write this line, there are just three northern white rhinos left alive on the planet. By the time you read it, they might all be gone.”

A book to give curious adults a firm layperson’s grasp of the science, or a deft tool to recruit high school students to pursue careers in genetic engineering, animal conservation or evolutionary biology.

A well-meaning book with and overbearing authorial voice. It reads like a series of separate essays that have been piled together and called a book. Constant callbacks met with (see Chapter ~, an entire chapter dedicated the author's obsession with Elvis as a self-indulgent way of explaining genetics as opposed to finding something a little less obviously absurdist. 

Additionally, the entire chapter Pilcher offers on bringing back Neanderthals is so filled with pathos that I could hardly keep from screaming at book itself.

That is not to say that there isn't a perfect respect for the topic she is discussing, there is, you can tell through everything that she cares about the topic and hand and the careful considerations that must be made in resurrecting the extinct but with so many bad jokes, and an abrasive authorial voice.I can't honestly say I would recommend this book to anyone but the most reluctant science readers.