Recommend Some Good Books on Evolutionary Theory?

I’m currently reading the Selfish Gene by Richard Dawkins. Do you guys know of anything else good? I really enjoyed Elaine Morgan’s the Descent of Women, and was considering picking up something else of hers. I also stumbled across The Red Queen by Matt Ridley–any opinions on that one?

Thanks!

The Blind Watchmaker by Dawkins is very good.

Wonderful Life by Stephen Jay Gould, while a little dated in the details, is a good intro to the Burgess Shale and the early evolution of animals in the Cambrian.

Dawkins’ Climbing Mount Improbable is a nice refutation of one of the central tenets of Intelligent Design - “irreducible complexity” .

I take it you’ve read Darwin? If not, do. Both On The Origin of Species and Descent of Man. The science is leaps ahead now, and some of the ideas are…quaint is a polite way of saying it - but they are still essential reading IMO.

Been a while But I recall that Hens teeth and horses toes as well as The Flamingo’s smile were interesting collections of essays by Gould.

This is a great one, and you can read it online! :slight_smile:

The Beak of the Finch: A Story of Evolution in Our Time

Darwin’s Ghost: The Origin of Species Updated

What Evolution Is

Ontogeny and Phylogeny

Activating Evolution by Dr.Chandra Suresh. :smiley:

Yes, read The Red Queen, excellent look at the “stratagy” of sex, and why we act the way we do around and about the opposite sex.
Ridley also wrote Nature via Nurture, published last year, which is a good look at activators and repressors. Especially how they are turned on and off by the external environment
I would also read Sean Carroll’s Endless Forms Most Beautiful. A look at evolutionary developmental biology; evolution as it takes place in the egg. Sometimes called Evo Devo. “Toolbox” genes, activator and repressor genes, (again) and the “on/off” switches to all of these. Some of the “toolbox” genes he looks at: Hox genes; segmentation and modularity. Distaless genes; limb formation. Tinman genes; formation of circulatory systems.

Thanks for all the recommendations, guys. I know at some point I have to get around to Darwin, but he seems awfully…heady. Lately I’ve been looking for more fun evolution type books. I’m really enjoying the Dawkins, for example. (I love learning the random twisted animal factoids.)

Dawkins *Ancestor’s Tale * is a great book as well.

Gould’s Natural History essays are chock full of random twisted animal factoids (and a healthy heaping of random twisted historical factoids, as well). The books which are compilations of these essays are:

Ever Since Darwin
The Panda’s Thumb
Hen’s Teeth and Horses’ Toes
The Flamingo’s Smile
Bully for Brontosaurus
Eight Little Piggies
Dinosaur in a Haystack
Leonardo’s Mountain of Clams and the Diet of Worms
The Lying Stones of Marrakech
I Have Landed

My husband keeps trying to make me read “Finding Darwin’s God” by Kenneth Miller. Kenneth Miller is a scientist and a Christian; his book is an attempt to reconcile science and religion in the modern world.

More anthropology than evolutionary theory - the books recommended so far include some great ones I would second - I recommend Jared Diamond’s Guns, Germs and Steel. The basic hypothesis is an exploration of whether Western European Man had an evolutionary advantage that led to acquisition of the guns, germs and steel that ultimately won the day during the era of exploration and colonization across the world. By evaluating a number of factors - presence of the right grains, draught animals, weather, latitudes, etc., Diamond argues that it is much more of a case that they were in the right place at the right time, and any other people in the same location would have ended up in the same position of power.

Great book - has scientific, fact-based cred and is very accessible and well-written so a lay person like myself could read it easily…

How The Mind Works by Steven Pinker. It looks at how our minds developed through natural selection.

It also quotes Cecil Adams, so it can’t be that bad.

if you’re interested in the evolution of man from previous apelike form, The Origin of Humankind by Richard Leakey is a fantastic read.