Richard Dawkins’ New Book Now Available for Pre-Order May 19, 2009

Richard Dawkins’ New Book Now Available for Pre-Order

By Guest Contributor
May 19, 2009

The Greatest Show on Earth: The Evidence for Evolution is Richard Dawkin‘s next book — it’s scheduled to be released on September 29th.

greatestshow

I’ve said this before, but I grew to love Dawkins’ writing after I read The Ancestor’s Tale, not The God Delusion. He has a way of communicating scientific ideas that is second to none.

Plus, for the $3,500,000 Free Press (the publisher) is paying for the book, it better be good 🙂

The initial title was Only a Theory?… I don’t know what caused the change, but I like the new title better.

Can’t wait to read it!

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  • Andrew C.

    The cover of his new book reminds me of the cover of Disintegration.

  • Tom

    Great title, makes it sort of a mystery as to what he believes to be the greatest show on the planet…

  • zoo

    The initial title was Only a Theory?… I don’t know what caused the change, but I like the new title better.

    Maybe because of Kenneth R. Miller’s recent book “Only a Theory“.

  • flawedprefect

    The first Dawkins I read was “The Blind Watchmaker”. Purely by chance, I ducked into a small book store in Santorini. I liked his style and his reasoning. I bought others on his evolutionary biology (the selfish gene being one of them) but gave “The God Delusion” a miss, as I wasn’t really interested in his take on religiosity. This book, however, I think I’ll have a read, since becoming aware of the creationist push to weaken science. However, I still think that it will speak to those who are already concerned about these things and have read him before. I doubt he will gain an extended audience. I hope to be proven resoundingly wrong!

  • Raghu Mani

    Completely agreed. The God Delusion is a decent enough book but Dawkins is out of his element when he isn’t writing about science.

    I’m glad he is back to science because that is where he excels. I’d say at least four of his books – The Selfish Gene, The Blind Watchmaker, Unweaving the Rainbow and The Ancestor’s Tale are pretty much essential for any lover of science. The opening paragraph of Unweaving the Rainbow is perhaps the most amazing way of opening any book that I have ever seen.

    These are all extremely tough acts to follow. Hope that this latest one is of the same caliber.

    Raghu

  • I can’t help it. I still miss Stephen Jay Gould. Dawkins was never my favorite writer or science writer.

  • I’ll wait for the paperback. I like Dawkins’ writing style even though I may disagree with the extent of his gene-centrism.

  • Tommy C

    Having the author in such big font above the title makes it look like the book is called:

    “Richard Dawkins: The greatest show on earth.”

    I know he’s entertaining, but the greatest show on earth? 🙂

  • Aatish

    Dawkins is often seen in a T-shirt that says ‘evolution: the greatest show on earth’. I guess that might be what prodded him towards this title. I think it’s awesome, and I’m looking forward to reading it. Jerry Coyne’s book on the evidence for evolution also looks pretty good.

  • Bacopa

    Unweaving the Rainbow is good but I’d say River out of Eden is my favorite.

    Another of my favorites on evolution are Monod’s Chance and Necessity. It’s a bit dated, but it’s nice to read something by a guy who a Nobel for helping discover how it is that the “information” to make an enzyme gets applied appropriately in a cell. Jacob and Monod worked with bacteria, but there are similar mechanisms in eukaryotes.

    Why Big Fierce Animals are Rare by Paul Colinvaux is another great read. It really helped me think quantitavely about ecology. Seven Clues to the Origin of Life is also very good. Cairn-Smith’s “clay gene” hypothesis doesn’t seem to be going anywhere, but this book is well argued. Who knows? Maybe he’s right.

  • I will be getting the new book for sure. Thanks for the heads up on this.

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