Author(s): Richard Dawkins

Science

In Climbing Mount Improbable, Richard Dawkins, author of The God Delusion, builds a powerful and carefully reasoned argument for evolutionary adaptation as the force behind all life on earth. What drives species to evolve? How can intricate structures such as the human eye, the spider's web or the wings of birds develop, seemingly by chance? Regarding evolution's most complex achievements as peaks on a metaphorical mountain, Climbing Mount Improbable reveals the ways in which the theory of natural selection can precisely explain the beautiful, bizarre and 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. Accompanied by evocative illustrations, Dawkins's eloquent descriptions of the living world's astonishing adaptations throw back the curtain on the mysteries of 'Mount Improbable'. 'A beautiful, barnstorming thunderclap of a book'  Michael White, Mail on Sunday 'Exhilarating - a perfect, elegant riposte to a great deal of fuzzy thinking about natural selection and evolution'  Observer 'Dawkins has done more than anyone else now writing to make evolutionary biology comprehensible and acceptable'  Sunday Times 'Dazzling'  David Attenborough 'A cracking good book on evolution'  John Gribbin Richard Dawkins is a Fellow of both the Royal Society and the Royal Society of Literature, and Vice President of the British Humanist Association. He was first catapulted to fame with The Selfish Gene, which he followed with a string of bestselling books: The Extended Phenotype, The Blind Watchmaker, River Out of Eden, Unweaving the Rainbow, and an impassioned defence of atheism, The God Delusion.