The Genetic Book of the Dead: A Darwinian Reverie

The Times Best Science Book of 2024 explores the deepest principles of evolutionary history, showing how the body, behavior, and genes of every living creature can be read as a book. Richard Dawkins dismantles influential criticisms of the 'genes-eye-view of life and asks if all our 'own genes can be seen as a gigantic colony of cooperating viruses.

Format: Hardback
Length: 360 pages
Publication date: 17 October 2024
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing PLC

The Times Best Science Book of 2024, written by one of the world's greatest science writers, delves into the deepest principles of evolutionary history. In this groundbreaking approach to the evolution of all life, Richard Dawkins presents a fascinating exploration of how the body, behavior, 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, for instance, 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 'genes-eye-view of life. And, to end with a provocative sting in the tail, the author asks: is there 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 Ancestors Tale comes a revolutionary, richly illustrated book that unlocks the door to an ancient past, seen through wholly new eyes.

Weight: 930g
Dimension: 165 x 239 x 29 (mm)
ISBN-13: 9781804548080