Books do Furnish a Life

An electrifying celebration of science writing

By: Richard Dawkins

Narrated by: Richard Dawkins, Neil deGrasse Tyson, Adam Hart-Davis, Steven Pinker, Christopher Hitchens, Lawrence Krauss, Matt Ridley, Lalla Ward

Brought to you by Penguin.

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. This audio edition also includes Richard Dawkins in conversation with Christopher Hitchens, in what was to be Christopher Hitchens' last interview before his death in 2011.

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.

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

© Richard Dawkins 2021 (P) Penguin Audio 2021

Critic reviews

Richard Dawkins is fine scientist, rigorous thinker and supremely gifted writer. His books are justly famous, but his shorter works are just as good. Here is a rich feast of his essays, reviews, forewords, squibs and conversations, in which talent and passion are married to deep knowledge.

Dawkins' books are full of passion as well as reason, human warmth as well as rational detachment, literature as well as science. Richard Dawkins is one of the finest English prose stylists of the past fifty years. Plenty of other scientists write well, but no one writes like Dawkins.

The content of the book is as excellent as its style-indeed, the two are intertwined. Some pieces are short, some long, all fascinating. The range is also astonishing: 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. With his treatment of everything from evolutionary psychology to the temptations of supposedly sophisticated theology, from African Eve to the beauty of the Galápagos, from the virtual reality software in our brains to postmodern baloney . . . Dawkins excites, surprises and nourishes the mind.

(Daniel Sharp)

Much more than just a collection of journalism, this has an overarching unity and presents a panoramic survey of his intellectual career. There are occasional moments of delicious savagery as Dawkins dismantles an opponent. Much more often he celebrates the work of fellow scientists and throughout the entire 460 pages, one can enjoy the unfailing clarity of his thought and prose, as well as the grandeur of his vision of life on Earth. (Mark Cocker)

Loved it!

One of my favourite Dawkins books, plus it has Hitch. loved the format too with the included interviews

Beautifully told science stories

Valuable summary of all kinds of interesting and important science books that must be read. Dawkins is telling a lot of stories around this books in the elegant and beautiful way that only he can create and in a great company of a real scientist.

Wonderful supplement to round out Dawkins

It is certainly a wonderful supplement to his magisterial work of the selfish jean and buying watch my group. He certainly comes across as a bit strident and dogmatic, but yet I think his heart is in the right place.