The Genetic Book of the Dead

By: Richard Dawkins, Jana Lenzová - illustrator

Narrated by: Richard Dawkins

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

In this groundbreaking 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 is a revolutionary, rich book that unlocks the door to an ancient past, seen through wholly new eyes.

©2024 Richard Dawkins (P)2024 Bloomsbury Publishing Plc.

Dawkins does it yet again!

Thoroughly enjoyed this latest work by Dawkinsת and even though I have read much of his earlier work (Selfish Gene, Greatest Show on Earth, Unweaving the Rainbow, etc.) this one stands on its own to (a) summarize Dawkins' stand on the issues of his previous works and (b) give a fresh new take on the subject of the Gene. Highly recommended!

You are a book

Fascinating homage to evolution - well-written brilliantly read. Got the hardcopy too - to my surprise the book is full of photos and illustrations: it feels like I made an investment