In the original dustsheet. Black board binding with glossy title on the spine.

• F.B.A. provides an in-depth photographic presentation of this item to stimulate your feeling and touch. More traditional book descriptions are immediately available.

How did the replication bomb we call “life” begin and where in the world, or rather, in the universe, is it heading? Writing with characteristic wit and an ability to clarify complex phenomena (the New York Times described his style as “the sort of science writing that makes the reader feel like a genius”), Richard Dawkins confronts this ancient mystery.

Review: Having read all of Richard Dawkins and been a regular attender at his lectures, I came to this book through an audio version read by him; doing a lot of travelling at one time, I whiled away the miles by listening to CDs and tapes. This was a present from someone who knew me well and I enjoyed the listening for many miles.

“Whether Mitochondrial Eve was an African or not, it is important to avoid a possible confusion with another sense in which it is undoubtedly true our ancestors came out of Africa. Mitochondrial Eve is a recent ancestor of all human beings.” (Pp. 60-61)

From the artificial woodland floor of the Oxford Museum, the dance floor of the honey bee, the Bronze Age African rift valley to the clinical research laboratories throughout the world, Dawkins takes readers on a challenging, intellectual journey exploring our pasts, presents and futures with all the enthusiasm and energy of an H.G. Wells explorer. He wants to discover rational, scientifically explicable answers to the most basic of questions. Throughout the book, he quotes extensively and, surprisingly, many of these quotations are from poets – Wordsworth, Housman, even Genesis. This explains why he has been awarded as many arts prizes for his writing as science prizes for his content.

” … there is, at bottom, no design, no bottom, no purpose, no evil and no good, nothing but blind, pitiless indifference. As that unhappy poet A.E. Housman put it:

“For Nature, heartless, witless Nature / Will neither care nor know”.

DNA neither cares nor knows. DNA just is. And we dance to its tune.” (P. 155)

The scientist in Dawkins might object to Housman’s capital “N” as he anthropomorphized nature, but the poet in him would see the reflected awesome wonder it has had for humankind throughout its history. Dawkins’ quotation might be misunderstood by some people (and certainly has been) and make others fearful in its starkness. I recommend that the book should be read through to gain invaluable insights into humanity.

Richard Dawkins FRS FRSL (born 26 March 1941) is a British evolutionary biologist and author. He is an emeritus fellow of New College, Oxford, and was Professor for Public Understanding of Science in the University of Oxford from 1995 to 2008. His 1976 book The Selfish Gene popularised the gene-centred view of evolution, as well as coining the term meme. Dawkins has won several academic and writing awards.

Dawkins is well known for his criticism of creationism and intelligent design as well as for being a vocal atheist. Dawkins wrote The Blind Watchmaker in 1986, arguing against the watchmaker analogy, an argument for the existence of a supernatural creator based upon the complexity of living organisms. Instead, he describes evolutionary processes as analogous to a blind watchmaker, in that reproduction, mutation, and selection are unguided by any sentient designer. In 2006, Dawkins published The God Delusion, contending that a supernatural creator almost certainly does not exist and that religious faith is a delusion. He founded the Richard Dawkins Foundation for Reason and Science in 2006. Dawkins has published two volumes of memoirs, An Appetite for Wonder (2013) and Brief Candle in the Dark (2015).