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Reading lists

Books to help you win every family argument this Christmas

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Extracts

Outgrowing God by Richard Dawkins

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Features

Richard Dawkins and Reverend Richard Coles debate ‘Outgrowing God’

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Richard Dawkins on time

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Penguin Press designers win Creative Review ‘Best in Book’ award for craft and technical innovation

A Beginner’s Guide

Outgrowing God

From the author of multi-million bestseller, The God Delusion, an exciting, accessible argument for atheism, written for a new generation.

Outgrowing God is another sally against his oldest foe, the Almighty

Books of 2019: The scientist and controversial commentator on religious and cultural questions presents an accessible, "junior" version of The God Delusion (2006).

His contagious enthusiasm renders the basics of natural selection newly astonishing.

Books of 2019: Richard Dawkins has always had it in for the almighty and he's back to take another pop at the poor bloke. Here he outlines what he believes is the real meaning of life.

Dawkins new book is special in the terrain of atheists’ pleas for humanism and rationalism precisely since it speaks to those most vulnerable to the coercive tactics of religion. As Dawkins himself says in the dedication, this book is for “all young people when they’re old enough to decide for themselves.” It is also, I must add, for their parents.

Professor Janna Levin, Claire Tow Professor of Physics & Astronoy at Barnard College of Columbia University

With wit, logic, and his characteristic flair for expressing complex ideas with uncanny clarity, Richard Dawkins separates myth from reality in OUTGROWING GOD.  His book is more than a beginners’ guide to atheism: it is a primer that liberates us to see and explore the beauty of the Universe free of fables and fantasies.

Neil Shubin, paleontologist and author of Your Inner Fish

The author of The God Delusion, the man at the forefront of the New Atheism movement, returns with passion to his theme.

Dawkins’ new book is perhaps his most likeable.

It offers irrefutable proof that [we] evolved from something else

Vividly demonstrates the spirit of scientific discovery that has made life meaningful for Dawkins himself. His contagious enthusiasm renders the basics of natural selection newly astonishing.

Outgrowing God has fine content and a genial tone. It should do well.

When someone is considering atheism I tell them to read the Bible first and then Dawkins. Outgrowing God - second only to the Bible!

When people ask me, 'If you could have dinner with three people...', Richard Dawkins often springs to mind. Reading Outgrowing God felt like having that dinner. Dawkins spends the first half of the dinner blowing my mind by explaining what we know about the origins of the Bible, and the second half changing the way I think about evolution. I came out feeling smarter.

Richard Dawkins is one of the great scientists and science communicators of our time, and Outgrowing God: A Beginner’s Guide shows that he does not mean to relinquish those titles any time soon. It is a paean to truth and reason, written in the hope that more people will rally to the defence of those values at a time when they are being hastily abandoned. Dawkins writes so well that his hope of helping society grow up might just be fulfilled.

My son came home from his first day in the sixth grade with arms outstretched, plaintively demanding to know: 'Have you ever heard of Jesus?' We burst out laughing. He felt that he had woken up one day to a world in which his peers were expressing beliefs he found frighteningly unreasonable. He began devouring books like The God Delusion, books that helped him formulate his own arguments and stand his ground. Dawkins' new book is special in the terrain of atheists' pleas for humanism and rationalism precisely since it speaks to those must vulnerable to the coercive tactics of religion. It is also for their parents.

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.

Should we believe in God? In this new book, written for a new generation, the brilliant science writer and author of The God Delusion, explains why we shouldn't. 
 
Should we believe in God? Do we need God in order to explain the existence of the universe? Do we need God in order to be good? In twelve chapters that address some of the most profound questions human beings confront, Dawkins marshals science, philosophy and comparative religion to interrogate the hypocrisies of all the religious systems and explain to readers of all ages how life emerged without a Creator, how evolution works and how our world came into being. 
 
For anyone hoping to grapple with the meaning of life and what to believe, Outgrowing God is a challenging, thrilling and revelatory read. 
 
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The Discussion that Sparked an Atheist Revolution  Foreword by Stephen Fry

The Four Horsemen

The transcript of the one and only conversation between 'the four horsemen' of New Atheism, with new introductions from Dawkins, Dennett and Harris and a sparkling foreword by Stephen Fry.

This transcript  is of historical significance and belongs in the library of all thinking people. A classic for our time...and all time.

Michael Shermer, Publisher Skeptic magazine, monthly columnist Scientific American, Presidential Fellow Chapman University, author of Heavens on Earth, The Moral Arc, The Believing Brain, and Why People Believe Weird Things

I have a short list of intellectual heroes, and Sam Harris, Christopher Hitchens, Richard Dawkins, and Daniel Dennett each have a place on it—not because I always agree with their views, but because I'm in awe of the way they form, express, and defend their views. If thinking were a sport, these four would be national superstars—and reading The Four Horsemen feels like having a front row seat at the all-star game. This is more than a book about atheism and religion—it's a lesson in how to use our intellect to cut through the haze of delusion and misconception inherent in any human society.

Tim Urban, author of the blog 'Wait But Why'

We are slowly losing the hard-won right, gained by brave heroes of the enlightenment such as Voltaire and Hume, to be free to criticise religion without persecution and prosecution; the crime of blasphemy is creeping back. The words of Hitchens, Dawkins, Harris and Dennett are needed more than ever. These are the heirs to Voltaire.

Matt Ridley, author of The Evolution of Everything

I was gripped. Throughout this erudite conversation the humility and openness of science shines against religion’s arrogance, hypocrisy and sheer gall in just ‘making stuff up’. How refreshing it is.

If you had to pick a place for our pop culture to change, Sun Records on December 4, 1956 at a jam session with Jerry Lee Lewis, Johnny Cash, Carl Perkins and Elvis Presley is a pretty good symbolic spot.  This conversation on September 30th, 2007 with Daniel, Sam, Richard, and Elvis . . . I mean Hitch at Hitch’s pad is as good a place as any to mark the start of the Atheist revolution.

What a gift to be able to eavesdrop on this conversation!  These four are the kinds of thinkers we don’t get enough of anymore; unapologetic, uncompromising, and deeply generous with one another as well as anyone who happens to be listening in. You needn’t be an atheist or a horseman to relish every word of this delightful book. You just need to be hungry for genuine intellectual inquiry and open debate. And, let’s face it, you’re probably starving.

Meghan Daum, author of The Unspeakable: And Other Subjects Of Discussion

Reading this book is like to getting to spend a profound afternoon with some of our greatest intellectuals. Blasphemous, erudite, devastatingly truthful, slyly hilarious.  I gasped, I laughed, I nodded, and sometimes had to stop and just think for a moment about what they'd dared to say.

Julia Sweeney, author of Letting Go of God

For people inclined to disbelieve supernatural explanations -- in America, we few, we happy few, we band of brothers and sisters -- The Four Horsemen is a smart, fun, funny, seriously provocative primer.

Thrilling...Challenging...This bracing exchange of ideas crackles with energy...an invigorating example of what happens when astute, inquisitive minds engage together on deep questions.

Richard Dawkins (Author) 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. Sam Harris (Author) Sam Harris is the author of five New York Times bestsellers. His books include The End of Faith, Letter to a Christian Nation, The Moral Landscape, Free Will, Lying, and Waking Up. The End of Faith won the 2005 PEN/Martha Albrand Award for Nonfiction. His work has been published in more than twenty languages. Harris has written for the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, the Economist, The Times, the Boston Globe, the Atlantic, Annals of Neurology, and other outlets. He received a degree in philosophy from Stanford University and a PhD in neuroscience from UCLA. Please visit his website at SamHarris.org. Daniel C. Dennett (Author) Daniel C. Dennett is the University Professor and Austin B. Fletcher Professor of Philosophy at Tufts University. He is the author of numerous books including Intuition Pumps and Other Tools for Thinking, Breaking the Spell, Darwin's Dangerous Idea, and Consciousness Explained. Christopher Hitchens (Author) Christopher Hitchens was an English-born American author, journalist and literary critic. He was a columnist at Vanity Fair, The Atlantic, World Affairs, The Nation, Slate, Free Inquiry, and a variety of other media in a career that spanned more than four decades and made him a prominent public intellectual, and a staple of talk shows and lecture circuits. His books include The Monarchy; Blood, Class, and Nostalgia; No One Left to Lie Toand God Is Not Great. He died in 2011. Stephen Fry (Foreword By) Stephen Fry is an award-winning comedian, actor, presenter and director. He rose to fame alongside Hugh Laurie in A Bit of Fry and Laurie (which he co-wrote with Laurie) and Jeeves and Wooster, and was unforgettable as General Melchett in Blackadder. He has hosted over 180 episodes of QI, and has narrated all seven of the Harry Potter novels for the audiobook recordings. He is the bestselling author of four novels - The Stars' Tennis Balls, Making History, The Hippopotamus and The Liar - as well as three volumes of autobiography - Moab is My Washpot, The Fry Chronicles and More Fool Me. Mythos and Heroes, his retelling of the Greek myths, are both Sunday Times bestsellers.

_________________ 
 
Includes a foreword by STEPHEN FRY 
 
'A classic for our time...And all time.' - Michael Shermer 
 
'The words of Hitchens, Dawkins, Harris and Dennett are needed more than ever. These are the heirs to Voltaire.' - Matt Ridley 
 
Known as the ‘four horsemen’ of New Atheism, these four big thinkers of the twenty-first century met only once. Their electrifying examination of ideas on this remarkable occasion was intense and wide-ranging. Everything that was said as they agreed and disagreed with one another, interrogated ideas and exchanged insights – about religion and atheism, science and sense – speaks with urgency to our present age. 
 
Questions they asked of each other included: ‘Is it ever possible to win a war of ideas? Is spirituality the preserve of the religious? Are there any truths you would rather not know? Would you want to see the end of faith?’ 
The dialogue was recorded, and is now transcribed and presented here with new introductions from the surviving three horsemen. 
 
With a sparkling introduction from Stephen Fry, it makes essential reading for all their admirers and for anyone interested in exploring the tensions between faith and reason.

Selected Writings of a Passionate Rationalist

Science in the Soul

THE NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER. A sparkling new anthology of essays, lectures and letters by the brilliant evolutionary biologist, author of The Selfish Gene and The God Delusion.

[Dawkins] is a thunderously gifted science writer

One of the best non-fiction writers alive today

The illumination of Dawkins’ incisive thinking on the intellectual world extends far beyond biology. What a treat to see so clearly how matter and meaning fit together, from fiction to philosophy to molecular biology, all in one unified vision!’  Daniel C. Dennett

In this golden age of enlightened science writing it is stunning that no scientist has ever won the Nobel Prize for Literature. Pulitzer Prizes, yes, but it is time literature's highest award be granted to a scientist whose writings have changed not just science but society. No living scientist is more deserving of such recognition than Richard Dawkins, whose every book reflects his literary genius and scientific substance. Science in the Soul is the perfect embodiment of Nobel quality literature."

Michael Shermer, Publisher Skeptic magazine, columnist Scientific American, author The Moral Arc and Heavens on Earth

I thank Thor and Zeus that in their infinite wisdom they chose to make the great wordsmith of our age a great rationalist and vice versa.

Matt Ridley, author of The Rational Optimist and The Evolution of Everything

A writer of tremendous clarity and force...in full polemical flight, Dawkins is a marvel.

This Dawkins is a dangerous guy. Like Marx. Or Darwin.

The most influential man of reason…intellectually rigorous to a fault.

With his latest book, ‘Science in the Soul’, Richard Dawkins continues the legacy of Carl Sagan, though of course, in a more combative mode... 
Richard Dawkins is one of the best science popularisers of our times. He is also an eminent evolutionary biologist... 
All the articles in this compilation are ultimately soul-elevating in the sense that they emphasise the importance of reason and spirit of science in approaching many of the problems which we may think as being outside the realm of science or domains where inducing a hostility to a scientific approach is possible.... 
Dawkins is an extraordinarily talented author and persuader ...Dawkins also comes across in this collection of essays as a warm rational scientist who is interestingly so open to the innocent human fascination for the grandeur of nature.

Dawkins at his most delicious. These are some of the finest treasures of non-fiction you'll find anywhere

Now, more than ever, public intellectual scientists like Dawkins are needed to counter the forces of faith, fiction, and farce dominating our so-called “post-fact” society. 
 
The Oxford University professor is the embodiment of the concept of the public intellectual

Richard Dawkins first catapulted to fame with his iconic work The Selfish Gene (1976) which he followed with a string of prestigious books, including The Blind Watchmaker, Climbing Mount Improbable, The God Delusion, a previous anthology A Devil's Chaplain (2003) and two volumes of autobiography, An Appetite for Wonder (2013) and Brief Candle in the Dark (2015). He is a Fellow of both the Royal Society and the Royal Society of Literature and the recipient of numerous honours and awards. He remains a fellow of New College, Oxford. In 2013, Dawkins was voted the world’s top thinker in Prospect magazine’s poll of 10,000 readers from over 100 countries.

THE NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER 
 
Richard Dawkins - author of The Selfish Gene, The Blind Watchmaker, and The God Delusion - is one of science's greatest communicators. This anthology of more than forty pieces is a kaleidoscopic argument for the power and the glory of science. 
 
Breathtaking, brilliant and passionate, these essays, journalism, lectures and letters make an unanswerable case for the wonder of scientific discovery and its power to stir the imagination; for the practical necessity of scientific endeavour to society; and for the importance of the scientific way of thinking – particularly in today’s ‘post-truth’ world. 
 
With an introduction and new commentary by the author, subjects range from evolution and Darwinian natural selection to the role of scientist as prophet, whether science is itself a religion, the probability of alien life in other worlds, and the beauties, cruelties and oddities of earthly life in this one. Alongside the explications, the celebrations and the controversies are wonderfully funny ventures into satire and parody, and moving personal reflections in memory and honour of others. 
 
Science in the Soul is a sparkling showcase for Professor Dawkins' rapier wit, the clarity, precision and vigour he brings to an argument, the beauty of his prose, the depth of his feeling and his capacity for joy.

The Blind Watchmaker

'This might just be the most important book on evolution since Darwin' John Gribbin in The Good Book Guide

***30th Anniversary Edition*** 
 
Acclaimed as the most influential work on evolution written in the last hundred years, The Blind Watchmaker offers an inspiring and accessible introduction to one of the most important scientific discoveries of all time. A brilliant and controversial book which demonstrates that evolution by natural selection - the unconscious, automatic, blind yet essentially non-random process discovered by Darwin - is the only answer to the biggest question of all: why do we exist?

Richard Dawkins has updated evolution ... His subject is nothing less than the meaning of life, and he attacks it with the evangelical fervour of a clergyman and the mind of a scientist

Beautiful ... he seizes happy analogies, bright metaphors and shining images to light up his passion and our darkness

Good writing, tight argument and unpulled punches ... a satisfying book

One of the best science books - one of the best of any books - I have ever read

In 1995 Richard Dawkins became the first holder of the Charles Simonyi Chair of the Public Understanding of Science at Oxford University. He is the bestselling author of THE SELFISH GENE, CLIMBING MOUNT IMPROBABLE (Penguin, 1996) and UNWEAVING THE RAINBOW (Penguin, 1998).

Acclaimed as the most influential work on evolution written in the last hundred years, The Blind Watchmaker offers an inspiring and accessible introduction to one of the most important scientific discoveries of all time. A brilliant and controversial book which demonstrates that evolution by natural selection - the unconscious, automatic, blind yet essentially non-random process discovered by Darwin - is the only answer to the biggest question of all: why do we exist?

Climbing Mount Improbable

***20th Anniversary Edition - With a New Introduction*** 
 
Cover note: Each copy of the anniversary edition of Climbing Mount Improbable features a unique shell. No two covers are exactly alike. 
 
How could such an intricate object as the human eye - so complex and so precise - have come about by chance? In this masterful piece of popular science, Richard Dawkins builds a powerful and carefully reasoned argument for evolutionary adaptation as the force behind all life on earth. The metaphor of 'Mount Improbable' represents the combination of perfection and improbability that we find in the seemingly 'designed' complexity of living things. And through it all runs the thread of DNA, the molecule of life, responsible for its own destiny on an unending pilgrimage through time. Evocative illustrations accompany Dawkins' eloquent descriptions of astonishing adaptations in the living world.

A beautiful, barnstorming thunderclap of a book

Mount Improbable is Dawkins's metaphor for natural selection: its peaks standing for evolution's most complex achievements ... a perfect, elegant riposte to a great deal of fuzzy thinking

One of the most gifted storytellers of our generation ... he writes like an angel

In 1995 Richard Dawkins became the first holder of the Charles Simonyi Chair of the Public Understanding of Science at Oxford University. He is the bestselling author of THE SELFISH GENE, THE BLIND WATCHMAKER (Penguin, 1988) and UNWEAVING THE RAINBOW (Penguin, 1998).

How could such an intricate object as the human eye - so complex and so precise - have come about by chance? In this masterful piece of popular science, Richard Dawkins builds a powerful and carefully reasoned argument for evolutionary adapatation as the force behind all life on earth. The metaphor of 'Mount Improbable' represents the combination of perfection and improbability that we find in the seemingly 'designed' complexity of living things. And through it all runs the thread of DNA, the molecule of life, responsible for its own destiny on an unending pilgrimage through time. Evocative illustrations accompany Dawkins' eloquent descriptions of astonishing adaptations in the living world.

Science, Delusion and the Appetite for Wonder

Unweaving the Rainbow

A dazzling, passionate polemic against anti-science movements of all kinds 
 
Cover note: Each copy of the new edition of Unweaving the Rainbow features a unique wavelength pattern. No two covers are exactly alike. 
 
Keats accused Newton of destroying the poetry of the rainbow by explaining the origin of its colours. In this illuminating and provocative book, Richard Dawkins argues that Keats could not have been more mistaken, and shows how an understanding of science enhances our wonder of the world. He argues that mysteries do not lose their poetry because they are solved: the solution is often more beautiful than the puzzle, uncovering even deeper mysteries. Dawkins takes up the most important and compelling topics in modern science, from astronomy and genetics to language and virtual reality, combining them in a landmark statement on the human appetite for wonder. 
 
Cover note: Each copy of the new edition of Unweaving the Rainbow features a unique wavelength pattern. No two covers are exactly alike.

A brilliant assertion of the wonder and excitement of real, tough, grown-up science

The way Dawkins writes about science is not just a brain-tonic. It is more like an extended stay on a brain health-farm ... You come out feeling lean, tuned and enormously more intelligent

Beautifully written and full of interesting, original ideas. Essential reading

For Dawkins there is more poetry, not less, in the rainbow because of Newton ... he weaves rainbows of wonder from other provinces of science and then unleashes his fury on those who accuse scientists like him of being unimaginative

In 1995 Richard Dawkins became the first holder of the Charles Simonyi Chair of the Public Understanding of Science at Oxford University. He is the bestselling author of THE SELFISH GENE, THE BLIND WATCHMAKER (Penguin, 1988) and CLIMBING MOUNT IMPROBABLE (Penguin, 1996).

A dazzling, passionate polemic against anti-science movements of all kinds. 
 
Keats accused Newton of destroying the poetry of the rainbow by explaining the origin of its colours. In this illuminating and provocative book, Richard Dawkins argues that Keats could not have been more mistaken, and shows how an understanding of science enhances our wonder of the world. He argues that mysteries do not lose their poetry because they are solved: the solution is often more beautiful than the puzzle, uncovering even deeper mysteries. Dawkins takes up the most important and compelling topics in modern science, from astronomy and genetics to language and virtual reality, combining them in a landmark statement on the human appetite for wonder.

Richard Dawkins

An electrifying celebration of science writing

'A rich feast of his essays, reviews, forewords, squibs and conversations, in which talent and passion are married to deep knowledge.' Matt Ridley 
 
'Enjoy the unfailing clarity of his thought and prose, as well as the grandeur of his vision of life on Earth.' - Mark Cocker, Spectator 
 
'Richard Dawkins is a thunderously gifted science writer.' Sunday Times 
 
Including conversations with Neil DeGrasse Tyson, Steven Pinker, Matt Ridley and more, this is an essential guide to the most exciting ideas of our time and their proponents from our most brilliant science communicator. 
 
Books Do Furnish a Life is divided by theme, including celebrating nature, exploring humanity, and interrogating faith. For the first time, it brings together Richard Dawkins' forewords, afterwords and introductions to the work of some of the leading thinkers of our age - Carl Sagan, Lawrence Krauss, Jacob Bronowski, Lewis Wolpert - with a selection of his reviews to provide an electrifying celebration of science writing, both fiction and non-fiction. It is also a sparkling addition to Dawkins' own remarkable canon of work. 
 
Plenty of other scientists write well, but no one writes like Dawkins... 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. - Areo Magazine

Richard Dawkins

Books do Furnish a Life

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