The Selfish Gene – Richard Dawkins

Description

Condition:Very good; Some foxing on first two pages and minor yellow highlights up until page 37

352 pages, Paperback, 1989 edition

“The Selfish Gene” caused a wave of excitement among biologists and the general public when it was first published in 1976. Its vivid rendering of a gene’s eye view of life, in lucid prose, gathered together the strands of thought about the nature of natural selection into a conceptual framework with far-reaching implications for our understanding of evolution. Time has confirmed its significance. Intellectually rigorous, yet written in non-technical language, “The Selfish Gene” is widely regarded as a masterpiece of science writing, and its insights remain as relevant today as on the day it was published.

Chapters:
1. Why are people?
2. The replicators
3. Immortal coils
4. The gene machine
5. Aggression stability and the selfish machine
6. Genesmanship
7. Family planning
8. Battle of the generations
9. Battle of the sexes
10. You scratch my back, I’ll ride on yours
11. Memes: the new replicators
12. Nice guys finish first
13. The long reach of the gene

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.