To get an excellent non-fiction book, you need a great topic and a skilled writer. The "quest to revive the woolly mammoth" is a great topic (that's the reason I purchased the book). The author must have a reasonable ability to write the story compellingly.
This book didn't make it to the "excellence" level. I'm not sure if it even reached the "decent" level. What is missing is sincere passion, creativity. The book is a collection of stereotypes about scientists and about the craziness of genius people. With Ben Mezrich, the author, everything becomes a forced adventure, even when it's not. On a scale of one to ten, everything in the book is at level 10 of excitement. Ben is not interested in building a connection between the reader and the characters of the story. He believes that creativity means telling everything as super exciting, super exceptional. He is wrong. The result is a boring book that slowly and tiredly flows from one page to the next, generating in the reader more frustration than curiosity.