The Oxford Book of Modern Science Writing [Hardcover]

Richard Dawkins (Editor)

Book Description

Publication Date: June 15, 2008

Boasting almost one hundred pieces, The Oxford Book of Modern Science Writing is a breathtaking celebration of the finest writing by scientists--the best such collection in print--packed with scintillating essays on everything from "The Discovery of Lucy" to "The Terror and Vastness of the Universe."
Edited by best-selling author and renowned scientist Richard Dawkins, this sterling collection brings together exhilarating pieces by a who's who of scientists and science writers, including Stephen Pinker, Stephen Jay Gould, Martin Gardner, Albert Einstein, Julian Huxley, and many dozens more. Readers will find excerpts from bestsellers such as Douglas R. Hofstadter's Godel, Escher, Bach, Francis Crick's Life Itself, Loren Eiseley's The Immense Journey, Daniel Dennett's Darwin's Dangerous Idea, and Rachel Carson's The Sea Around Us. There are classic essays ranging from J.B.S. Haldane's "On Being the Right Size" and Garrett Hardin's "The Tragedy of the Commons" to Alan Turing's "Computing Machinery and Intelligence" and Albert Einstein's famed New York Times article on "Relativity." And readers will also discover lesser-known but engaging pieces such as Lewis Thomas's "Seven Wonders of Science," J. Robert Oppenheimer on "War and Physicists," and Freeman Dyson's memoir of studying under Hans Bethe.

A must-read volume for all science buffs, The Oxford Book of Modern Science Writing is a rich and vibrant anthology that captures the poetry and excitement of scientific thought and discovery.

One of New Scientist's Editor's Picks for 2008

Editorial Reviews

Review

"Richard Dawkins's useful and entertaining anthology, The Oxford Book of Modern Science Writing, contains essays that have already stood the test of time. Each piece has a preamble of one or two paragraphs in which Dawkins explains why he chose it. His reasoning is impeccable, and these introductions leave the reader eager to devour what follows. I found the book hard to put down."-- William Cannon for American Scientist

"This a book one reads over a prolonged period of time, being in essence written for the nightstand or the table next to a comfortable armchair. This book richly deserves to be in any library, public, private, or academic." -- CHOICE

"It is a volume intended to celebrate rather than analyze modern science writing, and it fulfills this aim well: it is a book from which the love of science and the love of language shine." -- Science Magazine

"If you could only ever read one science book, this should probably be it."--New Scientist

"Much of the writing is indeed wonderful, filled with evocative imagery, poetic prose, and profound insights into nature. Dawkins wrote brief introductions to all 84 pieces...in this volume we wee another side of the man: The Dawkins who loves science passionately, who marvels at what it teaches us about the nature of things, and who is exceptionally skillful at conveying those findings to the general reader."--Karl W. Gilberson, Books and Culture: A Christian Review

About the Author

Richard Dawkins is the first holder of the Charles Simonyi Chair of the Public Understanding of Science at Oxford, and is a Fellow of New College, Oxford. His bestselling books include The Selfish Gene, The Blind Watchmaker, River Out of Eden, Climbing Mount Improbable, Unweaving the Rainbow, and The Ancestor's Tale. Dawkins is a Fellow of both the Royal Society and the Royal Society of Literature.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 448 pages
• Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA; First Edition edition (June 15, 2008)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0199216800
• ISBN-13: 978-0199216802
• Product Dimensions: 6.4 x 1.5 x 9.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.9 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (25 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #620,297 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Richard Dawkins taught zoology at the University of California at Berkeley and at Oxford University and is now the Charles Simonyi Professor of the Public Understanding of Science at Oxford, a position he has held since 1995. Among his previous books are The Ancestor's Tale, The Selfish Gene, The Blind Watchmaker, Climbing Mount Improbable, Unweaving the Rainbow, and A Devil's Chaplain. Dawkins lives in Oxford with his wife, the actress and artist Lalla Ward.

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

177 of 186 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars If this book doesn't jump start your interest in science, you just might be a redneck.... April 15, 2008

By Skidney Frybabie

Format:Hardcover|Amazon Verified Purchase

Dawkins' frequently claims that there is a much richer contemplative nature to a scientific view of the universe than in a view dominated by a "notion of a 'supreme being'." This anthology delivers the punch to this claim and does so with an amazing spectrum of ideas. If science were the basis of theology, this anthology contains the kind of writing one might read. This is not a collection about science theory, it is a collection of scientific ideas and dreams. It is prose for any lover of science, by some of the most eloquent and ardent scientists of our times (sans any topical contributions by Dawkins himself, by his own omission, though he nicely introduces each of the authors in the anthology and explains some of the reasons why they were chosen). Spanning many disciplines within the scientific community, not merely Dawkins' own field of biology, this anthology explores the many implications that make suffering through learning scientific fundamentals so very worthwhile. While I thoroughly loved reading this book as a middle-aged science buff, I would think this volume would be an equally great read for the scientifically minded college-bound-high-school student who has yet to decide which scientific discipline they may wish to specialize within. It is a collection that specializes in those blow-your-hair-back kind of answers we often got in science class, when frustrated with learning the basics, and dared to ask the professor, "why do I need to learn this stuff anyway?" It is precisely the kind of anthology one would imagine coming from a professorship that focuses on the *public understanding* of science.... It is a fully accessible volume that demonstrates just how elegant and numinous the thoughts of strictly material and humanistic minded people are without abandoning the scientific discipline itself. Read more ›

52 of 59 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Dawkins, a master writer June 12, 2008

By William Skyvington

Format:Hardcover

In the simple and friendly little book entitled Richard Dawkins, How a scientist changed the way we think [Oxford University Press 2006], edited by Alan Grafen and Mark Ridley, scientists and writers heaped praise upon a brilliant and illustrious fellow scientist and writer. In The Oxford Book of Modern Science Writing [Oxford University Press 2008] by Richard Dawkins, we encounter the inverse process. The Oxford guru of ungodly genetics offers us a personally-chosen digest of 83 literary variations -- one might say prose poems -- on scientific themes. And each extract is prefaced by a brilliantly terse introduction by the Master of Ceremonies, who invites us to look over his shoulder -- over his reading glasses, one might say -- to take voluptuous literary and didactic pleasure in the modern Word (logos) of Science. Dawkins is never nicer than when he talks of others: of other scientists and writers, of other bright survival machines with a zoological quill in their hands. He is a Renaissance scholar inviting us to a celebration of his scientific and artistic brethren. Dawkins and Oxford (its university, its press) are lights in the murky metaphysics of the modern world.

32 of 35 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Must-read for the scientifically aware June 12, 2008

By I. G. Norris

Format:Hardcover

Without wishing to detract from the value of Dawkins' more polemical writings on atheism, it's good for a change to see this contribution to the understanding of science. The field is so vast that for the informed but non-academic reader (or even for the specialist in a limited science field) this compendium, with its instructive and insightful introductory comments is a real boon. Highly readable and "dippable" and thoroughly recommended.

17 of 18 people found the following review helpful

4.0 out of 5 stars THE OXFORD BOOK OF MODERN SCIENCE WRITING EDITED BY RICHARD DAWKINS January 18, 2009

By Alexandro C. Telander

Format:Hardcover

Richard Dawkins, author of The Selfish Gene, The Ancestor's Tale, and The God Delusion, needs no introduction having established himself as a reputable voice when discussing science in its many forms. His latest effort is The Oxford Book of Modern Science Writing, in a hefty tome, where Dawkins attempts to present a concise view of science to the world in many short passages from many different scientists of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries that tessellate together to form a beautiful volume of writing.

The book is divided into four parts, as Dawkins organizes the vast wealth of science writing available not in chronological order, but groups the extracts into the following categories: "What Scientists Study," "Who Scientists Are," "What Scientists Think," "What Scientists Delight in." Organizing it this ways serves to make the book more entertaining in the variety of subjects that are presented when the book is read from cover to cover. Should the reader want to use the book more as a reference tool or to look up some specific authors or terms, there is a thorough index at the end of the book. With each extract, Dawkins offers up his own commentary and reason for choosing the specific piece.

All the great scientists make an appearance here: Albert Einstein, Stephen Hawking, Francis Crick, Brian Greene, Jared Diamond, Richard Feynman, Carl Sagan, Primo Levi, the list goes on and on. But this list is not reserved for the greats of science, but many of the women and men who have worked hard in their lives to further the knowledge of science in areas such as genetics, evolution, string theory, relativity, and mathematics.... The Oxford Book of Modern Science Writing is a weighty, comprehensive book with almost everything science has had to offer in the last hundred years or so, and while it may not be for the science novice, the ideas, theories, and hypotheses expressed in this book have reshaped science, and offered up hope and ideals for future answers and theories that will continue to change the world as we know it.

Find more reviews, as well as a selection of my writing, and a link to the book review podcast BookBanter at[..] Read more ›