The Genetic Book of the Dead

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 R. Krebs, author of Food: A Very Short Introduction and co-author, An Introduction to Behavioral Ecology * Written with typical verve and panache, Richard Dawkinss The Genetic Book of the Dead makes a brilliant contribution to the public understanding of evolution using our most up-to-date understanding of genetics. It will enthral, surprise, and challenge you. Read it! * Jerry A. Coyne, author of Why Evolution is True and Faith Versus Fact * This book is a summation of the ideas of the author who brought us "memes" and "selfish genes". Richard Dawkinss lucid prose will change the way you think about your evolutionary past. * David Haig, author of From Darwin to Derrida: Selfish Genes, Social Selves, and the Meanings of Life * The deployment of the conceit of genes looking backward in time is clever and well done. A piece of vivid popular science. * Stephen Stearns, co-author of Evolution: An Introduction * In this stunning book, Richard Dawkins explains how biologists can understand the evolutionary history of organisms by reading their genome and phenotype. These readouts reveal the past lives our ancestors lived while also predicting those of our descendants well at least those that will be successful. Dawkins is the most accomplished science communicator of the past half century, and this book is a masterpiece of popular science writing. A truly wonderful and inspiring read. * Tim Coulson, Professor of Zoology, University of Oxford *

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. He is also a Fellow of the Royal Society and of the Royal Society of Literature. Dawkins lives in Oxford. Jana Lenzov, 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.