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Books do Furnish a Life Richard Dawkins

Books do Furnish a Life By Richard Dawkins

Books do Furnish a Life by Richard Dawkins


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Books do Furnish a Life Summary

Books do Furnish a Life: An electrifying celebration of science writing by Richard Dawkins

At a time when science can seem complex and remote, it has a greater impact on our lives, and to the future of our planet, than ever before. It really matters that its discoveries and truths should be clearly and widely communicated. That its enemies, from the malicious to the muddled, the self-deluding to the self-interested, be challenged and exposed. That science should be brought out of the laboratory, taken into the corridors of power and defended in the maelstrom of popular culture. No one does this better than Richard Dawkins.

In bringing together his forewords, afterwords and introductions to works by some of the leading thinkers of our age - Carl Sagan, Lawrence Krauss, Jacob Bronowski, Lewis Wolpert - and a selection of his reviews, both admiring and critical, of a wide range of scientific and other works, Books do Furnish a Life celebrates the writers who communicate the ideas of science and the natural world in both fiction and non-fiction. It celebrates the courage of those who write about their experiences of escaping religion and embracing rationality, of protecting the truths of science and analytical rigour against charlatanry and obfuscation.

Books do Furnish a Life Reviews

Richard Dawkins is fine scientist, rigorous thinker and supremely gifted writer. His books are justly famous, but his shorter works are just as good. Here is a rich feast of his essays, reviews, forewords, squibs and conversations, in which talent and passion are married to deep knowledge. * Matt Ridley, author of How Innovation Works *

Dawkins' books are full of passion as well as reason, human warmth as well as rational detachment, literature as well as science. Richard Dawkins is one of the finest English prose stylists of the past fifty years. Plenty of other scientists write well, but no one writes like Dawkins.
This collection is mostly made up of reviews, introductions and the like-and anyone who writes at a virtuoso level for such ephemera is a wordsmith to be reckoned with. (Compare Samuel Johnson's masterpieces in similar genres.) Even the shortest pieces are not one-line, workaday reviews, but full of originality and insight...
The content of the book is as excellent as its style-indeed, the two are intertwined. Some pieces are short, some long, all fascinating. The range is also astonishing: here is Dawkins the teacher, the scholar, the polemicist, the joker, the aesthete, the poet, the satirist, the man of compassion as well as indignation, the slayer of superstition and, above all, the scientist. With his treatment of everything from evolutionary psychology to the temptations of supposedly sophisticated theology, from African Eve to the beauty of the Galapagos, from the virtual reality software in our brains to postmodern baloney and the inspiration to be found in great science fiction, Dawkins excites, surprises and nourishes the mind.

-- Daniel Sharp * Areo Magazine *
Much more than just a collection of journalism, this has an overarching unity and presents a panoramic survey of his intellectual career. There are occasional moments of delicious savagery as Dawkins dismantles an opponent. Much more often he celebrates the work of fellow scientists and throughout the entire 460 pages, one can enjoy the unfailing clarity of his thought and prose, as well as the grandeur of his vision of life on Earth. -- Mark Cocker * Spectator *

About Richard Dawkins

Richard Dawkins is author of The Selfish Gene, voted The Royal Society's Most Inspiring Science Book of All Time, and also the bestsellers The Blind Watchmaker, Climbing Mount Improbable, The Ancestor's Tale, The God Delusion, and two volumes of autobiography, An Appetite for Wonder and Brief Candle in the Dark. He is a Fellow of New College, Oxford and both the Royal Society and the Royal Society of Literature. In 2013, Dawkins was voted the world's top thinker in Prospect magazine's poll of 10,000 readers from over 100 countries.

Additional information

GOR011864138
9781787633698
1787633691
Books do Furnish a Life: An electrifying celebration of science writing by Richard Dawkins
Used - Very Good
Paperback
Transworld Publishers Ltd
20210506
464
N/A
Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary.
This is a used book - there is no escaping the fact it has been read by someone else and it will show signs of wear and previous use. Overall we expect it to be in very good condition, but if you are not entirely satisfied please get in touch with us

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