I am delighted to share my review today of The Genetic Book of the Dead by Richard Dawkins. This is a non-fiction popular science author and the first time I have read one of his books. I do have a couple of his books on audio so I will listen to those at some point soon.
My huge thanks to Jade at Head of Zeus for arranging my hardback copy for me to review. My review is unbiased and my own opinion.
One of the world’s great science writers and a book that reflects on the vast arc of evolutionary history and what it tells us about life on Earth. How much do we really know about our past? For centuries, we have yearned to learn more about our ancestors and piece together the story of how we came to be. But language can only record so much. And fossils can be even harder to decipher. We are left groping in the dark, forced to speculate and reconstruct ways of life based on fragments of information. But what if there was a better way?
In The Genetic Book of the Dead, Richard Dawkins explores the untapped potential of DNA to transform and transcend our understanding of evolution. In the future, a zoologist presented with a hitherto unknown animal will be able to read its body and its genes as detailed descriptions of the world its ancestors inhabited. This ‘book of the dead’ would uncover the remarkable ways in which animals have overcome obstacles, adapted to their environments and, again and again, developed remarkably similar ways of finding solutions to life’s problems. From the bestselling author of The Selfish Gene comes a revolutionary, vividly illustrated book that unlocks the door to a past more vivid, nuanced and fascinating than anything we have ever seen.
MY REVIEW
I am by no means a science-driven reader or one who understands many of the concepts, but I do like to pick up a book that delves into science.
Darwin was renowned for his work and observations on evolution so when I saw this book I decided to give it a go. I looked at reviews of previous books by Richard Dawkins to see how approachable his books were. Those reviews were favourable and so I felt much better about reading a book about genetics.
Did I understand all that was mentioned, well no I didn’t but while I read the book it did make sense. I often find this when reading more specialist books and I found this books was engaging enough and once I started I soon found myself reading a chapter every night.
The author gives his opinions and observations that he has discovered over the years. He is a zoologist and teaches as well as writing books, so he does know his chosen field. He tells the reader of how over the evolution of life on earth certain adaptations have become unique to certain animal groups. We are aware that there are niche animals that have specialised for the environment they live in.
The author relates that millions of years ago, some animals left the water only to return to it, while others remained on land. One thing that I was not aware of was that Hippo and Whales are distant cousins.
Results are taken from fossils and DNA and as advances in science continue there is more to be learned. Observations of animals provide information about how life has adapted to survive, to hunt, to defend and to basically exist.
Some fabulous images accompany the text providing a good aid to see what the text is referring to. Let’s be honest it is always nice to have pages of non-fiction text broken into images, graphs or diagrams, so this does help a lot.
This is a wonderful book and I do think if I had more of a science background I would still learn from it. I did learn a lot, mostly while I was reading. It is a good book for looking into or learning more about the steps and processes genetics has shaped the world we live in. Ideal for fans of science, biology, zoology and non-fiction science books and one I would be very happy to recommend.
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