The Selfish Gene: 40th Anniversary edition, Edition 4

Richard Dawkins

Jun 2016 · Oxford University Press

About this ebook

The million copy international bestseller, critically acclaimed and translated into over 25 languages. As influential today as when it was first published, The Selfish Gene has become a classic exposition of evolutionary thought. Professor Dawkins articulates a gene's eye view of evolution - a view giving centre stage to these persistent units of information, and in which organisms can be seen as vehicles for their replication. This imaginative, powerful, and stylistically brilliant work not only brought the insights of Neo-Darwinism to a wide audience, but galvanized the biology community, generating much debate and stimulating whole new areas of research. Forty years later, its insights remain as relevant today as on the day it was published. This 40th anniversary edition includes a new epilogue from the author discussing the continuing relevance of these ideas in evolutionary biology today, as well as the original prefaces and foreword, and extracts from early reviews. Oxford Landmark Science books are 'must-read' classics of modern science writing which have crystallized big ideas, and shaped the way we think.

Ratings and reviews

That was the first popular science book I've read, so I have a special affection of it. This book introduced me to the world of science. It showed me that scientific researches can be interesting and exciting. That is, without a doubt, a masterpiece in its pure form. If you wonder what should a perfect popular science book look like - "The selfish gene" is one of the best example.

This book provides the fundamental gene centric view of natural selection and thoroughly debunks the claims that natural selection operates at the levels of either the individual or group.The chapter on memes is a favorite of mine because of their similarities to genes but also because these cultural replicators differ in being exponentially faster by leaping from one brain to the next.Dawkins manages to make the subject matter both accessible and entertaining.

Although I already knew much of the content of this book, it has helped shape the way I see and think about nature. It can also be an eye-opening book for people who are not very much into science. The concepts are explained simply and beautifully, so I think no prerequisites are necessary to understand them.

About the author

Professor Richard Dawkins is one of the most influential science writers and communicators of our generation. He was the first holder of the Charles Simonyi Chair of the Public Understanding of Science at Oxford, a position he held from 1995 until 2008, and is Emeritus Fellow of New College, Oxford. His bestselling books include The Extended Phenotype (1982) and its sequel The Blind Watchmaker (1986), River Out of Eden (1995), Climbing Mount Improbable (1996), Unweaving the Rainbow (1998), A Devil's Chaplain (2004), The Ancestor's Tale (2004), and The God Delusion (2007). He has won many literary and scientific awards, including the 1987 Royal Society of Literature Award, the 1990 Michael Faraday Award of the Royal Society, the 1994 Nakayama Prize for Human Science, the 1997 International Cosmos Prize, and the Nierenberg Prize for Science in the Public Interest in 2009.