THE TIMES BEST SCIENCE BOOK OF 2024GUARDIAN BEST IDEAS BOOKS OF 2024From 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.

Autorentext
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.

Klappentext
From one of the world's great science writers and biologists: 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. What biologists call ?convergent evolution', the way in which species separated by vast stretches of time have evolved surprisingly recognisable forms and functions, is one of the most powerful and least understood forces driving life on earth.

From the bestselling author of The Selfish Gene comes a revolutionary book that unlocks the door to a past more vivid, nuanced and fascinating than anything we have ever seen.

Zusammenfassung
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.