Climbing Mount Improbable

Description

'Dazzling' David Attenborough 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.

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).

A beautiful, barnstorming thunderclap of a book -- Michael White * Mail on Sunday * 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 * Observer * One of the most gifted storytellers of our generation ... he writes like an angel * Scotland on Sunday * A cracking good book -- John Gribbin