The Genetic Book Of The Dead (a Darwinian Reverie)

By (author) Dawkins, Richard; Illustrated by Lenzová, Jana
Description:

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From one of the world’s great science writers, a book that explores the deepest principles of evolutionary history.

In this groundbreaking new approach to the evolution of all life, Richard Dawkins shows how the body, behaviour, and genes of every living creature can be read as a book – an archive of the worlds of its ancestors. A perfectly camouflaged desert lizard has a desiccated landscape of sand and stones ‘painted’ on its back. Its skin can be read as a description of ancient deserts in which its ancestors survived – and, before that, of the worlds of its more remote ancestors: a genetic book of the dead.

But such descriptions are more than skin-deep. The fine chisels of Darwinian natural selection carve their way through the very warp and woof of the body, into every biochemical nook and corner, into every cell of every living creature. A zoologist of the future, presented with a hitherto-unknown animal, will be able to reconstruct the worlds that shaped its ancestors, to read its unique ‘book of the dead’.

The book is filled with fascinating examples of the power of Darwinian natural selection to build exquisite perfection, paradoxically accompanied by what look like gross blunders. Along the way, Dawkins dismantles influential criticisms of the ‘gene’s-eye-view’ of life. And, to end with a provocative sting in the tail, the author asks there is a sense in which all our ‘own’ genes can be seen as a gigantic colony of cooperating viruses?

From the author of The Selfish Gene and The Ancestor’s Tale comes a revolutionary, richly illustrated book that unlocks the door to an ancient past, seen through wholly new eyes.

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Richard Dawkins’s lovely new book is an old-fashioned miscellany of such zoological surprises... Dawkins’s true aim, the literary evocation of wonder at the vast and improbable grandeur of nature, is consistently achieved
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A book that will inform, intrigue and fascinate its readers
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A joyful celebration... [Dawkins''] ability to tell the glorious tale of evolution in action remains unrivalled.
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[An] illuminating deep dive into genes, bodies and Darwinian natural selection. Highly readable and brilliantly illustrated
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Overflowing with the beauty of nature, the beauty of language, and the beauty of ideas.
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Dazzling in originality and scope, with beautiful illustrations, this is a wonderful celebration of the power of natural selection. Richard Dawkins reveals with brilliant clarity the imprint on organisms of their evolutionary past.
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The ingenuity of evolution is infinite, a fact that fascinates Richard Dawkins as much as it fascinated Charles Darwin. Inside each organism he finds rich palimpsests chronicling the history of life itself.
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Once again, Richard Dawkins asks us to look at the living world in a totally novel way: Every organism carries, in its genes, a record of the past environments in which its ancestors survived. This brilliant new way of interpreting nature opens our eyes to both the past and the future.
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Written with typical verve and panache, Richard Dawkins’s The Genetic Book of the Dead makes a brilliant
contribution to the public understanding of evolution using our most up-to-date understanding of genetics. It
will enthral, surprise, and challenge you. Read it!

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This book is a su