Jurassic Park

by Michael Crichton

Book Overview

No Synopsis Available.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0091821347
• ISBN13: 9780091821340
• Release Date: January 1990
• Publisher: Alfred A. Knopf, Inc.
• Length: 640 Pages
• Weight: 1.65 lbs.

Customer Reviews

Don't Read It In the Dark

Don't Read it in the dark..., May 13, 2009 By Alan "Fonzo" (Bloomington, IN) (REAL NAME) This book has received gigantic numbers of readers since its appearance in 1993. It's about, briefly, a dinosaur-viewing park called Jurassic Park for people to view the big lizards in the present. Now, I've read it and its sequel, Lost World twice, so I'll try extra hard to leave out the many spoilers I have. John Hammond, the creator of the park, has personally invited four people to get a "sneak peek" of the park before it opens to the public. He invites Dr. Allan Grant, a paleontologist, Dr Ellie Sattler, a botanist, and Dr. Malcolm, a theorist. An attorney named Gennaro also tags along because he has to make sure everything is legal. Gennaro isn't exactly the smartest guy out there, but Hammond has no choice. Gennaro must expect the park. Naturally, all hell breaks loose. And no, I'm not going to tell you exactly what kind of hell breaks loose, but several particularly dangerous types do. Once hell does break loose, the story immediately gains speed and becomes impossible to put down. Mrs. Sage's Class

Its a pretty good book after all

Jurassic Park was loosely based on the facts of biology that theoretically let you clone an animal that is extinct. At the beginning of the book is a small history lesson of biology and genetic engineering. Later "Dr. Wu"(also in the movie) briefly explained how they got the DNA for the dinosaurs through extracting blood of mosquito type insects that were caught in amber and therefore fossilized, although this DNA was fragmented. Dr. Wu put the fragmented DNA back together by adding thymine, adenosine, guanine, or cytosine back into the missing areas, as you would think this would create problems in the genetic code of the dinosaurs. The book was riveting even during the explanations, especially when I have at least a basic understanding of the facts due to school this year. Unfortunately the biological facts in the book seem to disappear after the first explanations.

THE GREATEST BOOK EVER! 9.75 OUT OF 10

I absolutely love this book, in fact I've read it three times and I still want to keep reading it because it's so damn good. The whole presentation is masterfully put together and very intelligent and believable. WHAT IT'S ABOUT: A group of people go to visit a mysterious park on a Costa Rican island owned by a millionaire named John Hammond. Dr. Alan Grant; an archeologist, Dr. Ellie Sattler; a paleobotanist, Ian Malcolm a mathematician who specializes in Chaos Theory, Donald Gennaro; a representative from one of the investors of the park, and Timmy and Lex;, the grandkids of John Hammond. When they go to the park they witness the miracles of genetics through the creation of dinosaur clones; fifteen species in total. This was made possible by amber. Inside different amber samples a mosquito from millions of years ago is preserved inside, and the blood it sucked was from dinosaurs. Thus, DNA was extracted from this blood to clone the dinosaurs. Sometimes the DNA strand would be incomplete, so certain DNA compounds from other reptiles was put into the DNA strand. Why is this important? It plays a vital role later in the book. All of the dinosaurs have been genetically engineered to be female, so there is no breeding, or so it seems. Things seem to go fine most of the time on the tour until a power outage occurs, when an employee; Dennis Nedry, turns off all of the power in order to steal dinosaur DNA samples for a company called Biosyn. When the power goes out, all hell breaks loose because the electric fences that held back the dinosaurs are no longer electrified. Later in the book all sorts of complex scientific things come to play, most notably the Chaos Theory which is very well-explained in the book and the theory dinosaurs represented birds more than reptiles because of certain things they do. This book is actually better than the movies, and when you read it you'll be wondering why some of these things weren't included in the movies. Plus, the ending will bother you forever. The ending doesn't suck and isn't particularly creepy, it's just very bothersome and I'm still bugged by it. This book is also noticeably gory and descriptive about blood and guts and people and other dinosaurs being eaten. Plus, some characters from the movie that didn't die, do die in the book. And some characters that weren't shown much in the movie play a bigger role in the book. I couldn't help but notice how you will be very tense during the moments of suspense because you really don't know what will happen, which makes it all the more awesome. The only flaw? A slow beginning prevents a perfect score. Even with that flaw, this is still the greatest book ever written. And for those of you who hate me because of my To Kill A Mockingbird review you can shove it.

Jurassic Park: Masterpice

ONE OF THE GREATEST BOOKS EVER!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Nu'ff Said

A great ride

As usual Michael Crichton executes a brilliant set-up and brings in all the characters for introduction by the end of the second itieration. The bulk of the book is a rollercoaster ride and the suspense is heightened by periodically killing off his characters. Crichton doesn't end his books well, wrap up is not his forte. Interesting to see the changes they made to the movie, which would have definitely spruced up the characterisation in the book.