A Raconteur of Nature’s Back Story

Richard Dawkins, with a statue of Charles Darwin at the Natural History Museum in London.


The Greatest Show on Earth,' by Richard Dawkins: Evolution All Around (October 11, 2009)

Richard Dawkins’s Web Site







If there were a celebrity of the evolutionary world, Mr. Dawkins would certainly be it. His best-selling books — including “The Selfish Gene” and “The Blind Watchmaker,” laying out his case for a gene-centered view of evolution — have gone a long way toward making evolutionary biology accessible to a wide audience.

He lectures to sell-out audiences, receives standing ovations and regularly places in the Top 10 on Prospect magazine’s annual list of the world’s 100 Top Public Intellectuals. His latest book, “The Greatest Show on Earth: The Evidence for Evolution” (Free Press), has been on the New York Times nonfiction best-seller list for three weeks.

For one thing, 2009 is the 200th anniversary of Darwin’s birth, and the 150th anniversary of his book “On the Origin of Species.” For another, “The Greatest Show on Earth” is Mr. Dawkins’s own “missing link,” he said, filling in the gaps in his previous works. While earlier books assumed that readers understood the scientific basis for evolution, this one lays it out directly.