The Genetic Book of the Dead

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

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

Review

Richard Dawkins's lovely new book is an old-fashioned miscellany of such zoological surprises... Dawkins's true aim, the literary evocation of wonder at the vast and improbable grandeur of nature, is consistently achieved ― The Telegraph

A book that will inform, intrigue and fascinate its readers ― The TLS

A joyful celebration... [Dawkins'] ability to tell the glorious tale of evolution in action remains unrivalled. ― Financial Times

[An] illuminating deep dive into genes, bodies and Darwinian natural selection. Highly readable and brilliantly illustrated ― i news

Overflowing with the beauty of nature, the beauty of language, and the beauty of ideas. ― Steven Pinker, author of Rationality and Enlightenment Now

Dazzling in originality and scope, with beautiful illustrations, this is a wonderful celebration of the power of natural selection. Richard Dawkins reveals with brilliant clarity the imprint on organisms of their evolutionary past. ― Nick Davies, author of Cuckoo: Cheating By Nature

The ingenuity of evolution is infinite, a fact that fascinates Richard Dawkins as much as it fascinated Charles Darwin. Inside each organism he finds rich palimpsests chronicling the history of life itself. ― Matt Ridley, author of The Evolution of Everything and How Innovation Works

Once again, Richard Dawkins asks us to look at the living world in a totally novel way: Every organism carries, in its genes, a record of the past environments in which its ancestors survived. This brilliant new way of interpreting nature opens our eyes to both the past and the future. ― John Krebs, author of Food: A Very Short Introduction and co-author, An Introduction to Behavioral Ecology

About the Author

Richard Dawkins is one of the world's most eminent writers and thinkers. He is the award-winning author of The Selfish Gene, The Blind Watchmaker, The God Delusion and a string of other bestselling science books, and is a Fellow of the Royal Society and of the Royal Society of Literature. Dawkins lives in Oxford.

Jana Lenzová born and raised in Bratislava, Slovakia, is an illustrator, translator and interpreter. After Jana had been commissioned to translate The God Delusion by Richard Dawkins into Slovak, she began contributing to his books as an illustrator.