From a renowned biologist and best-selling author, a whole new way of looking at living organisms: reading them as documents describing ancient worlds

A Financial Times Best Book of 2024: Science - Named Science Book of the Year by Times (UK) - A Guardian Best Ideas Book of 2024

Intellectually sparkling and beautifully crafted.--Adrian Woolfson, Wall Street Journal

A glorious affair. . . . Arguably [Dawkins's] most joyous ode to the wonders that evolution has wrought in the animal world.--Philip Ball, Science

An exquisitely camouflaged lizard has a desiccated landscape of sand and stones painted on its back. Its skin can be read as a description of an ancient desert, a world in which its ancestors survived. Such descriptions are more than skin deep, however. They penetrate the very warp and woof of the entire animal.

In this groundbreaking exploration of the power of Darwinian evolution and what it can reveal about the past, Richard Dawkins shows how the body, behavior, and genes of every living creature can be read as a book--an archive of the worlds of its ancestors. In the future, a zoologist presented with a hitherto unknown animal will be able to decode its ancestral history, to read its unique book of the dead. Such readings are already uncovering the remarkable ways animals overcome obstacles, adapt to their environments, and, again and again, develop remarkably similar ways of solving life's problems.

From the author of The Selfish Gene comes a revolutionary, richly illustrated book that unlocks the door to a past more vivid, nuanced, and fascinating than anything we have seen.

The million copy international bestseller, critically acclaimed and translated into over 25 languages.

As influential today as when it was first published, The Selfish Gene has become a classic exposition of evolutionary thought. Professor Dawkins articulates a gene's eye view of evolution - a view giving centre stage to these persistent units of information, and in which organisms can be seen as vehicles for their replication. This imaginative, powerful, and stylistically brilliant work not only brought the insights of Neo-Darwinism to a wide audience, but galvanized the biology community, generating much debate and stimulating whole new areas of research. Forty years later, its insights remain as relevant today as on the day it was published.

This 40th anniversary edition includes a new epilogue from the author discussing the continuing relevance of these ideas in evolutionary biology today, as well as the original prefaces and foreword, and extracts from early reviews.

Oxford Landmark Science books are 'must-read' classics of modern science writing which have crystallized big ideas, and shaped the way we think.

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER
INTERNATIONAL BESTSELLER

In the seminal text on atheism in the twenty-first centuy, renowned scientist Richard Dawkins examines the irrationality of believing in God and the grievous harm religion has inflicted on society.

From the sex-obsessed tyrant in the Old Testament to the more benign Celestial Watchmaker favored by some Enlightenment thinkers, Dawkins rigorously analyzes God in all his forms, eviscerating the major arguments for religion and demonstrating the supreme improbability of a supreme being. His argument steeped in impressive historical and contemporary evidence, spanning from the Crusades to 9/11, Dawkins shows how religion fuels war and foments bigotry, and makes the compelling case that belief in God is not just wrong but potentially deadly. As a solution, Dawkins offers exhilarating insight into the advantages of atheism for the individual and society, not the least of which is a clearer, truer appreciation of the universe's wonders than any faith could ever muster.

An elegant, text-only edition of the New York Times bestseller that's been hailed as the definitive authority on...everything.

Richard Dawkins, bestselling author and the world's most celebrated evolutionary biologist, has spent his career elucidating the many wonders of science. Here, he takes a broader approach and uses his unrivaled explanatory powers to illuminate the ways in which the world really works.

Filled with clever thought experiments and jaw-dropping facts, The Magic of Reality explains a stunningly wide range of natural phenomena: How old is the universe? Why do the continents look like disconnected pieces of a jigsaw puzzle? What causes tsunamis? Why are there so many kinds of plants and animals? Who was the first man, or woman?

Starting with the magical, mythical explanations for the wonders of nature, Dawkins reveals the exhilarating scientific truths behind these occurrences. This is a page-turning detective story that not only mines all the sciences for its clues but primes the reader to think like a scientist as well.

Richard Dawkins transformed our view of God in his blockbuster, The God Delusion, which sold millions of copies in English alone. He revolutionized the way we see natural selection in the seminal bestseller The Selfish Gene. Now, he launches a fierce counterattack against proponents of Intelligent Design in his New York Times bestseller, The Greatest Show on Earth.Intelligent Design is being taught in our schools; educators are being asked to teach the controversy behind evolutionary theory. There is no controversy. Dawkins sifts through rich layers of scientific evidence--from living examples of natural selection to clues in the fossil record; from natural clocks that mark the vast epochs wherein evolution ran its course to the intricacies of developing embryos; from plate tectonics to molecular genetics--to make the airtight case that we find ourselves perched on one tiny twig in the midst of a blossoming and flourishing tree of life and it is no accident, but the direct consequence of evolution by non-random selection. His unjaded passion for the natural world turns what might have been a negative argument, exposing the absurdities of the creationist position, into a positive offering to the reader: nothing less than a master's vision of life, in all its splendor.

The Blind Watchmaker is the seminal text for understanding evolution today. In the eighteenth century, theologian William Paley developed a famous metaphor for creationism: that of the skilled watchmaker. In The Blind Watchmaker, Richard Dawkins crafts an elegant riposte to show that the complex process of Darwinian natural selection is unconscious and automatic. If natural selection can be said to play the role of a watchmaker in nature, it is a blind one--working without foresight or purpose.

In an eloquent, uniquely persuasive account of the theory of natural selection, Dawkins illustrates how simple organisms slowly change over time to create a world of enormous complexity, diversity, and beauty.

A preeminent scientist--and the world's most prominent atheist--asserts the irrationality of belief in God and the grievous harm religion has inflicted on society, from the Crusades to 9/11.

With rigor and wit, Dawkins examines God in all his forms, from the sex-obsessed tyrant of the Old Testament to the more benign (but still illogical) Celestial Watchmaker favored by some Enlightenment thinkers. He eviscerates the major arguments for religion and demonstrates the supreme improbability of a supreme being. He shows how religion fuels war, foments bigotry, and abuses children, buttressing his points with historical and contemporary evidence. The God Delusion makes a compelling case that belief in God is not just wrong but potentially deadly. It also offers exhilarating insight into the advantages of atheism to the individual and society, not the least of which is a clearer, truer appreciation of the universe's wonders than any faith could ever muster.

Biologist, humanist, and bestselling author Richard Dawkins deeply examines the inherent beauty within modern scientific discoveries.
If any recent writing about science is poetic, it is this (The Wall Street Journal).
Did Newton unweave the rainbow by reducing it to its prismatic colors, as Keats contended? Did he, in other words, diminish beauty? Far from it, says acclaimed scientist Richard Dawkins; Newton's unweaving is the key to much of modern astronomy and to the breathtaking poetry of modern cosmology. Mysteries don't lose their poetry because they are solved: the solution often is more beautiful than the puzzle, uncovering deeper mysteries.
With the wit, insight, and spellbinding prose that have made him a bestselling author, Dawkins takes up the most important and compelling topics in modern science, from astronomy and genetics to language and virtual reality, combining them in a landmark statement of the human appetite for wonder. Unweaving the Rainbow is a brilliant assessment of what science is (and isn't), a tribute to science not because it is useful but because it is uplifting.

The renowned biologist and thinker Richard Dawkins presents his most expansive work in this revised edition that offers a comprehensive look at evolution.

Loosely based on the form of Chaucer's Canterbury Tales, Dawkins's tale takes us modern humans back through four billion years of life on our planet. As the pilgrimage progresses, we join with other organisms at the forty rendezvous points where we find a common ancestor. The band of pilgrims swells into a vast crowd as we join first with other primates, then with other mammals, and so on back to the first primordial organism.

Dawkins's brilliant, inventive approach allows us to view the connections between ourselves and all other life in a bracingly novel way. It also lets him shed bright new light on the most compelling aspects of evolutionary history and theory: sexual selection, speciation, convergent evolution, extinction, genetics, plate tectonics, geographical dispersal, and more.

The Ancestor's Tale is at once a far-reaching survey of the latest, best thinking on biology and a fascinating history of life on Earth. Here Dawkins shows us how remarkable we are, how astonishing our history, and how intimate our relationship with the rest of the living world.

The Selfish Gene is a classic exposition of evolutionary thought. In it Professor Dawkins articulates a gene's eye view of evolution - a view giving centre stage to these persistent units of information, and in which organisms can be seen as vehicles for the replication of genes. The book provoked widespread and heated debate, which in part led Dawkins to write The Extended Phenotype, in which he gave a deeper clarification of the central concept of the gene as the unit of selection, as well as contributing his own development of this insight.

For the first time, The Extended Selfish Gene brings these two books together, by including two key chapters from The Extended Phenotype. These chapters provide Dawkins's detailed and powerful response to two issues raised by critics of The Selfish Gene: the accusations of genetic determinism (the idea that our behaviour is entirely determined by our genes), and of adaptationism (that all traits are indiscriminately perceived to be adaptations resulting from natural selection). While written in particular for the biology community, Dawkins's clarity of expression allows these chapters to be accessible to all who are seriously engaged with the gene's eye view and its implications.

The imaginative, powerful, and stylistically brilliant Selfish Gene not only brought the insights of Neo-Darwinism to a wide audience, but galvanized the biology community, generating much debate and stimulating whole new areas of research. Forty years later, its insights remain as significant as on the day it was published. Along with the two extra chapters, The Extended Selfish Gene includes a new epilogue to The Selfish Gene from the author which highlights the relevance of the gene's eye view to evolutionary biology today.

Richard Dawkins on how nature and humans have learned to overcome the pull of gravity and take to the skies.

'A masterly investigation of all aspects of flight, human and animal... A beautifully produced book that will appeal across age groups' Alexander McCall Smith

'Dawkins has always been an extraordinarily muscular, persuasive thinker. What feels new here is that he writes with such charm and warmth' The Times

Have you ever dreamt you could fly? Or imagined what it would be like to glide and swoop through the sky like a bird? Do you let your mind soar to unknown, magical spaces? Richard Dawkins explores the wonder of flight: from the mythical Icarus, to the sadly extinct but spectacular bird Argentavis magnificens, from the Wright flyer and the 747, to the Tinkerbella fairyfly and the Peregrine falcon. But he also explores flights of the mind and escaping the everyday - through science, ideas and imagination. Fascinating and beautifully illustrated, this is a unique collaboration between one of the world's leading scientists and a talented artist.

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER - The legendary biologist and bestselling author mounts a timely and passionate defense of science and clear thinking with this career-spanning collection of essays, including twenty pieces published in the United States for the first time.

For decades, Richard Dawkins has been a brilliant scientific communicator, consistently illuminating the wonders of nature and attacking faulty logic. Science in the Soul brings together forty-two essays, polemics, and paeans--all written with Dawkins's characteristic erudition, remorseless wit, and unjaded awe of the natural world.

Though it spans three decades, this book couldn't be more timely or more urgent. Elected officials have opened the floodgates to prejudices that have for half a century been unacceptable or at least undercover. In a passionate introduction, Dawkins calls on us to insist that reason take center stage and that gut feelings, even when they don't represent the stirred dark waters of xenophobia, misogyny, or other blind prejudice, should stay out of the voting booth. And in the essays themselves, newly annotated by the author, he investigates a number of issues, including the importance of empirical evidence, and decries bad science, religion in the schools, and climate-change deniers.

Dawkins has equal ardor for the sacred truth of nature and renders here with typical virtuosity the glories and complexities of the natural world. Woven into an exploration of the vastness of geological time, for instance, is the peculiar history of the giant tortoises and the sea turtles--whose journeys between water and land tell us a deeper story about evolution. At this moment, when so many highly placed people still question the fact of evolution, Dawkins asks what Darwin would make of his own legacy--a mixture of exhilaration and exasperation--and celebrates science as possessing many of religion's virtues--explanation, consolation, and uplift--without its detriments of superstition and prejudice.

In a world grown irrational and hostile to facts, Science in the Soul is an essential collection by an indispensable author.

Praise for Science in the Soul

Compelling . . . rendered in gloriously spiky and opinionated prose . . . Dawkins is] one of the great science popularizers of the last half-century.--The Christian Science Monitor

Dawkins is a ferocious polemicist, a defender of reason and enemy of superstition.--John Horgan, Scientific American

The first collection of essays from renowned scientist and best-selling author Richard Dawkins.

Richard Dawkins's essays are an enthusiastic testament to the power of rigorous, scientific examination, and they span many different corners of his personal and professional life. He revisits the meme, the unit of cultural information that he named and wrote about in his groundbreaking work The Selfish Gene. He makes moving tributes to friends and colleagues, including a eulogy for novelist Douglas Adams; he shares correspondence with the evolutionary biologist Stephen Jay Gould; and he visits with the famed paleoanthropologists Richard and Maeve Leakey at their African wildlife preserve. He concludes the essays with a vivid note to his ten-year-old daughter, reminding her to remain curious, to ask questions, and to live the examined life.

How did the replication bomb we call life begin and where in the world, or rather, in the universe, is it heading? Writing with characteristic wit and an ability to clarify complex phenomena (the New York Times described his style as the sort of science writing that makes the reader feel like a genius), Richard Dawkins confronts this ancient mystery.

The metaphor of Mount Improbable represents the combination of perfection and improbability that is epitomized in the seemingly designed complexity of living things. Dawkins skillfully guides the reader on a breathtaking journey through the mountain's passes and up its many peaks to demonstrate that following the improbable path to perfection takes time. Evocative illustrations accompany Dawkins's eloquent descriptions of extraordinary adaptations such as the teeming populations of figs, the intricate silken world of spiders, and the evolution of wings on the bodies of flightless animals. And through it all runs the thread of DNA, the molecule of life, responsible for its own destiny on an unending pilgrimage through time.

Climbing Mount Improbable is a book of great impact and skill, written by the most prominent Darwinian of our age.

Richard Dawkins on how nature and humans have learned to overcome the pull of gravity and take to the skies.

'A masterly investigation of all aspects of flight, human and animal... A beautifully produced book that will appeal across age groups' Alexander McCall Smith

'Dawkins has always been an extraordinarily muscular, persuasive thinker. What feels new here is that he writes with such charm and warmth' The Times

Have you ever dreamt you could fly? Or imagined what it would be like to glide and swoop through the sky like a bird? Do you let your mind soar to unknown, magical spaces? Richard Dawkins explores the wonder of flight: from the mythical Icarus, to the sadly extinct but spectacular bird Argentavis magnificens, from the Wright flyer and the 747, to the Tinkerbella fairyfly and the Peregrine falcon. But he also explores flights of the mind and escaping the everyday - through science, ideas and imagination. Fascinating and beautifully illustrated, this is a unique collaboration between one of the world's leading scientists and a talented artist.

A SPECTATOR BEST BOOK OF 2021

'Richard Dawkins is a thunderously gifted science writer.' Sunday Times

'It may be a collection of shorter parts, but the book is in no sense Dawkins made simple. It amounts to a substantive whole which offers a unitary panoramic view across his entire intellectual life.' Spectator

Including conversations with Neil DeGrasse Tyson, Steven Pinker, Matt Ridley and more, this is an essential guide to the most exciting ideas of our time and their proponents from our most brilliant science communicator.

Books Do Furnish a Life is divided by theme, including celebrating nature, exploring humanity, and interrogating faith. For the first time, it brings together Richard Dawkins' forewords, afterwords and introductions to the work of some of the leading thinkers of our age - Carl Sagan, Lawrence Krauss, Jacob Bronowski, Lewis Wolpert - with a selection of his reviews to provide an electrifying celebration of science writing, both fiction and non-fiction. It is also a sparkling addition to Dawkins' own remarkable canon of work.

Plenty of other scientists write well, but no one writes like Dawkins... here is Dawkins the teacher, the scholar, the polemicist, the joker, the aesthete, the poet, the satirist, the man of compassion as well as indignation, the slayer of superstition and, above all, the scientist. - Areo Magazine

Should we believe in God? In this brisk introduction to modern atheism, one of the world's greatest science writers tells us why we shouldn't.

Richard Dawkins was fifteen when he stopped believing in God.

Deeply impressed by the beauty and complexity of living things, he'd felt certain they must have had a designer. Learning about evolution changed his mind. Now one of the world's best and bestselling science communicators, Dawkins has given readers, young and old, the same opportunity to rethink the big questions.

In twelve fiercely funny, mind-expanding chapters, Dawkins explains how the natural world arose without a designer--the improbability and beauty of the bottom-up programming that engineers an embryo or a flock of starlings--and challenges head-on some of the most basic assumptions made by the world's religions: Do you believe in God? Which one? Is the Bible a Good Book? Is adhering to a religion necessary, or even likely, to make people good to one another? Dissecting everything from Abraham's abuse of Isaac to the construction of a snowflake, Outgrowing God is a concise, provocative guide to thinking for yourself.

Praise for Outgrowing God

My son came home from his first day in the sixth grade with arms outstretched plaintively demanding to know: 'Have you ever heard of Jesus?' We burst out laughing. Maybe not our finest parenting moment, given that he was genuinely distraught. He felt that he had woken up one day to a world in which his peers were expressing beliefs he found frighteningly unreasonable. He began devouring books like The God Delusion, books that helped him formulate his own arguments and helped him stand his ground. Dawkins's new book is special in the terrain of atheists' pleas for humanism and rationalism precisely since it speaks to those most vulnerable to the coercive tactics of religion. As Dawkins himself says in the dedication, this book is for 'all young people when they're old enough to decide for themselves.' It is also, I must add, for their parents.--Janna Levin, author of Black Hole Blues

When someone is considering atheism I tell them to read the Bible first and then Dawkins. Outgrowing God--second only to the Bible --Penn Jillette, author of God, No

Un libro sobre las distintas formas de volar presentes a lo largo de la historia.

Por qué soñamos con volar?
Cuál es el origen evolutivo de las alas?
Qué caracteriza a las máquinas voladoras ideadas por el ser humano?

Estas son algunas de las preguntas a las que responde este extraordinario libro sobre la manera en que las criaturas del mundo natural y los humanos hemos desafiado la gravedad a lo largo de la historia.

En nuestro deseo de imitar a los pájaros, hemos creado aparatos tan singulares como el globo aerostático o el avión, e incluso hemos logrado alcanzar el espacio. Por su parte, algunos animales han desarrollado las alas, mientras que determinadas especies las han perdido. Si a esto le sumamos invenciones como la alfombra mágica, Pegaso o Harry Potter, no cabe duda de que son innumerables las alusiones que demuestran que el arte de volar siempre nos ha fascinado.

Un asombroso ensayo que revela las distintas formas de vuelo presentes en disciplinas tan complejas como la biología, la física, la literatura, el arte y la mitología.

Ciencia e imaginación toman vuelo en esta obra dedicada a los habitantes de los cielos.
The Wall Street Journal