Richard Dawkins: The Genetic Book of the Dead

by Dawkins, Richard & Lenzova, Jana

ISBN: 9781804548097

Published: 2025-08-14

THE TIMES BEST SCIENCE BOOK OF 2024 GUARDIAN BEST IDEAS BOOKS OF 2024 ECONOMIST BEST BOOKS OF 2024 FINANCIAL TIMES BEST BOOKS OF 2024 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...