Customer Reviews

Evolution: A Very Short Introduction (Very Short Introductions)

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It is a sign of the times that the authors on occasion take a defensive attitude to their subject. Creationism, for whatever reason, has proved remarkably adaptive and, strange as it may seem, evolutionary biologists still feel obliged to painstakingly lay out the evidence for evolution per se, rather than just discuss its mechanisms or trace its history.

The Charlesworths do a good job of this, albeit in a rather dry, academic style that may not suit readers that just want a light, readable introduction to the basic principles of evolution.

The book contains a fairly heavy dose of microbiology, as the authors go to some lengths to detail the biological functions underlying heredity and evolution. This is useful revision for readers with high school science, but tough going for the complete beginner. Similarly, the style is plain and succinct but never light or breezy. This is not a dummy's guide.

Evolution theory took a spectacular wrong turn in the latter part of the 20th century with the emergence of the idea that selection acts only at the gene level, a view popularized by Dawkins's The Selfish Gene. This bizarre notion gained a considerable following and was the subject of a heated dispute between Dawkins and Gould that ended only with the latter's death. Thankfully, sanity has been restored and it is now once again recognized that selection can take place at any level, and it is refreshing to see the Charlesworths, in this book, stating unequivocally (p 74) that there can be selection at species level and at other levels (p 73). Interestingly, there is an extract from a very favorable review by Dawkins of this book, on the back cover. Did he skip pages 73 and 74 or has he at last seen the light?

This series is prone to typos and the mutant printing gene has not been bred out of this particular book. Figure 19 is a monumental example. It is printed in landscape rather than portrait mode, effectively sideways (you'd have to see it to understand) thus leaving half the page blank and half the figure missing. The birds and mammals are therefore cruelly pruned from the tree of life. OUP really should get a grip.

Look elsewhere if you want a true introductory text, but select this if you want an excellent summary of the current state of knowledge of evolution and its underlying biological processes.

For someone who was expecting a discussion of evolution from a "macro", "peleontological" or even "arquelogical" perspective this "introductory" book came as a surprise. My critique is not about the quality of the book, but about focus: the authors completely miss the point by focusing the discussion on genes, proteins, DNA, biochemistry etc. The fact that it was Dawkins, and not O Wilson or Gould, who gave a praise to the book should serve as a warning. Note that there is nothing wrong to use genetic explanations to supplement an argument regarding evolution, but the book appears to do the opposite: a discussion of the biochemical mechanics of inheritance with supplementary comments regarding other evolutionary pressures. Again, if you wish to understand evolution from a micro-, biochemical, genetic perspective, then this is the book for you! Otherwise, you will be waisting your money. Finally, for something along a real discussion of evolution check out Wood's "Human Evolution" from the same series (it also uses genetics, but only to support the argument!).

I approached this book with the best intentions, but was disappointed. It's too hard and dry for an interested layman, and probably too short for anyone actually studying the subject. The ideal reader may be a professional in a science related to the subject matter (such as medicine) who needs to get up to speed with it. Despite its size, it's not a quick and easy read for a layman, and it's definitely not the kind of science book you put in the hands of a creationist.

I understand that writing about evolution is not easy, because it rests on so many other things in biology (molecular biology, embryology, morphology, and so on), plus many things from other sciences. But my idea of an introductory text is that you bring the reader up to speed with what the reader needs to know to understand the material. You shouldn't need to have knowledge equivalent to a biology student to understand a book with this title.

I have no doubt that the authors are good scientists, but there are better pop-science authors in this field.

An excellent review for the reader familiar with Evolution. Also a very good introduction for the novice.

The good thing about this book is that it provides the bare essentials, for a layman, needed to describe evolution. For example, it covers important concepts such as genetic drift, mutation, adoption and selection over very long periods of time. Hence if one's goal is to obtain the basics of the theory the book succeeds. Unforutnatley, it barely succeeds. Why? Reasons are a lack of elaboration on these basic concepts and illustrations that, in general, do not do a good job of illustrating the concepts discussed (and many of the illustrations are very important to for the points being made in the book [i.e., mutation over time]). Competing theories that are relatively easy to intellectually debase, such as "intelligent design", are not even elaborated on. The book is also "dry" but this is the least of its problems. Coming from an academic press and a Professor this is not a surprise.

In short, if one is a layman and only wants to obtain a very basic understanding of the rudimentary concepts behind the theory of evolution, this book fulfills its purpose. However, if one is looking for anything beyond this the book does not succeed. Considering how many books that have been written as introductions to the layman, one can do better. Examples include Evans and Selina's "Introducing Evolution" and Dawkin's "Blind Watchmaker" and "Greatest Show on Earth" though, to be fair, the latter two are much longer (at least twice the length).