Finding Darwin's God: A Scientist's Search for Common Ground Between God and Evolution

The God Delusion

Richard Dawkins · 416 pages

Publication Date: January 16, 2008 A preeminent scientist—and the world's most prominent atheist—asserts the irrationality of belief in God and the grievous harm religion has inflicted on society, from the Crusades to 9/11. With rigor and wit, Dawkins examines God in all his forms, from the sex-obsessed tyrant of the Old Testament to the more benign (but still illogical) Celestial Watchmaker f

The Bonobo and the Atheist: In Search of Humanism Among the Primates

Frans de Waal · 304 pages

A renowned primatologist argues that ethical behavior witnessed in animals is the evolutionary and biological origin of human fairness and explains that morality has more to do with natural instincts than with religion.

Darwin's Black Box: The Biochemical Challenge to Evolution

Michael J. Behe · 307 pages

Virtually all serious scientists accept the truth of Darwin's theory of evolution. While the fight for its acceptance has been a long and difficult one, after a century the battle is over. Biologists are now confident that their remaining questions, such as how life on Earth began, or how the Cambrian explosion could have produced so many new species in such a short time, will be found to have Dar

The Meaning of Human Existence

Edward O. Wilson · 207 pages

How did humanity originate and why does a species like ours exist on this planet? Do we have a special place, even a destiny in the universe? Where are we going, and perhaps, the most difficult question of all, "Why?" In The Meaning of Human Existence, his most philosophical work to date, Pulitzer Prize–winning biologist Edward O. Wilson grapples with these and other existential questions, examini

Undeniable: Evolution and the Science of Creation

Bill Nye · 309 pages

"Sparked by a controversial debate in February 2014, Bill Nye has set off on an energetic campaign to spread awareness of evolution and the powerful way it shapes our lives. In Undeniable: Evolution and the Science of Creation, he explains why race does not really exist; evaluates the true promise and peril of genetically modified food; reveals how new species are born, in a dog kennel and in a Lo

Bully for Brontosaurus

Stephen Jay Gould · 540 pages

Essays from the author's column This view of life, published in Natural history.

Why Evolution is True

Jerry A. Coyne · 309 pages

Why evolution is more than just a theory: it is a factIn all the current highly publicized debates about creationism and its descendant "intelligent design," there is an element of the controversy that is rarely mentioned—the evidence, the empirical truth of evolution by natural selection. Even Richard Dawkins and Stephen Jay Gould, while extolling the beauty of evolution and examining case studie

The Price of Altruism: George Price and the Search for the Origins of Kindness

Oren Harman · 451 pages

Describes the intellectual journey of eccentric American genius George Price, who tried to answer the evolutionary riddle of why people are nice, and eventually gave away all his belongings and took his own life in a squatter's flat.

Richard Dawkins: How a Scientist Changed the Way We Think

Alan Grafen, Mark Ridley · 283 pages

Symbiotic Planet: A New Look at Evolution

Lynn Margulis · 147 pages

Although Charles Darwin's theory of evolution laid the foundations of modern biology, it did not tell the whole story. Most remarkably, ``The Origin of Species said very little about, of all things, the origins of species. Darwin and his modern successors have shown very convincingly how inherited variations are naturally selected, but they leave unanswered how variant organisms come to be in the

The Origin of Species

Charles Darwin · 488 pages

Dr. Tatiana's Sex Advice to All Creation

Olivia Judson · 320 pages

Do your genitals explode? Are you 200,000 times smaller than your mate? Do you drug your lover with a potion that keeps her faithful? You may not get up to such tricks, but some creatures do: sex is one of the most powerful forces in nature, and generates an astounding diversity of forms and behaviors. But why? Dr Tatiana's Sex Advice to All Creation explores the science of sex, considering eve

Evolution: The Remarkable History of a Scientific Theory

Edward J. Larson · 368 pages

"In this work, science historian Edward J. Larson takes us on a guided tour of Darwin's "dangerous idea," from its theoretical antecedents in the early nineteenth century to the brilliant breakthroughs of Darwin and Alfred Russel Wallace, to Watson and Crick's stunning discovery of the DNA double helix, and to today's triumphant neo-Darwinian synthesis and rising sociobiology." "Along the way, Lar

Trilobite: Eyewitness to Evolution

Richard Fortey · 302 pages

"With Fortey's expert guidance, we begin to understand how trilobites reveal the pattern and mechanism of evolution through their fossil legacy in the rocks. Through the eyes of trilobites, he allows us glimpses of former worlds as foreign in their geography as in their life forms. Altogether, he provides a unique picture of our geological past, which in turn provides us - scientist and layperson

Darwin's Ghosts: The Secret History of Evolution

Rebecca Stott · 396 pages

Christmas, 1859. Just one month after the publication of On the Origin of Species, Darwin received a letter that deeply unsettled him. He had expected criticism. Letters were arriving every day like swarms, some expressing praise, most outrage and accusations of heresy. But the letter from the Reverend Powell was different.

The Link: Uncovering Our Earliest Ancestor

Colin Tudge, Josh Young · 267 pages

For more than a century, scientists have raced to unravel the human family tree and have grappled with its complications. Now, with an astonishing new discovery, everything we thought we knew about primate origins could change. Lying inside a high-security vault, deep within the heart of one of the world's leading natural history museums, is the scientific find of a lifetime - a perfectly fossiliz

Lucy: the beginnings of humankind

Donald C. Johanson, Maitland Armstrong Edey · 492 pages

En 1974, en Ethiopie, un tout jeune paléoanthropologue américain, Donald Johanson, découvrait, "en pièces détachées", le squelette d'une petite dame d'un mètre à peine, de trente kilos et de trois millions et demi d'années. En l'honneur des Beatles, elle était aussitôt baptisée Lucy.En 1979, l'annonce officielle de cette stupéfiante découverte, avec tous les détails résultant des travaux de J0hans

Feathers: The Evolution of a Natural Miracle

Thor Hanson · 336 pages

Feathers are an evolutionary marvel: aerodynamic, insulating, beguiling. They date back more than 100 million years. Yet their story has never been fully told. In Feathers, biologist Thor Hanson details a sweeping natural history, as feathers have been used to fly, protect, attract, and adorn through time and place. Applying the research of paleontologists, ornithologists, biologists, engineers,

Origins: 14 Bllion Years of Cosmic Evolution

Neil deGrasse Tyson, Donald Goldsmith · 336 pages

"Drawing on the current cross-pollination among geology, biology, astrophysics, and cosmology, Origins explains the soul-stirring leaps in our understanding of the universe while capturing the importance of such extraordinary events as the first image of a galaxy being born and the exploration of Martian frontiers by Spirit Rover. Distilling complex science into clear and lively prose, coauthors N

Power, Sex, Suicide: Mitochondria and the Meaning of Life

Nick Lane · 368 pages

"Today, mitochondria are central to research into human prehistory, genetic diseases, cell suicide, fertility, ageing, bioenergetics, sex, and the eukaryotic cell. Piecing together puzzles from the forefront of research, this book paints a sweeping canvas that will thrill all who are interested in biology, while also contributing to evolutionary thinking and debate. This is a book full of insights

The Jesuit and the Skull

Amir D. Aczel · 320 pages

At the Water's Edge: Fish with Fingers, Whales with Legs, and How Life Came Ashore but Then Went Back to Sea

Carl Zimmer · 290 pages

At the Water's Edge takes you to the icy peaks of Greenland, the ancient shores of the Tethys Sea, and the warm waters of the Bahamas to visit with dolphins as it surveys how we have come to understand two special cases of macroevolution. In the first, around 360 million years ago, the descendants of one lineage of fish came ashore and rushed over the continents, eventually evolving into everythin

Almost Like A Whale: The Origin Of Species Updated

Steve Jones · 519 pages

Survival of the Sickest: A Medical Maverick Discovers Why We Need Disease

Sharon Moalem · 279 pages

Survival of the Sickest: The Surprising Connections Between Disease and Longevity is a 2007 New York Times Bestselling science book by Sharon Moalem, an evolutionary biologist and neurogeneticist, and Jonathan Prince, senior advisor and speechwriter for the Clinton administration. It was originally titled, Survival of the Sickest: A Medical Maverick Discovers Why We Need Disease.