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Richard Dawkins

The Magic of Reality: How We Know What's Really True Hardcover – October 4, 2011

by Richard Dawkins (Author), Dave McKean (Illustrator)

2,707 ratings

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Magic takes many forms. Supernatural magic is what our ancestors used in order to explain the world before they developed the scientific method. The ancient Egyptians explained the night by suggesting the goddess Nut swallowed the sun. The Vikings believed a rainbow was the gods’ bridge to earth. The Japanese used to explain earthquakes by conjuring a gigantic catfish that carried the world on its back—earthquakes occurred each time it flipped its tail. These are magical, extraordinary tales. But there is another kind of magic, and it lies in the exhilaration of discovering the real answers to these questions. It is the magic of reality—science.

Packed with clever thought experiments, dazzling illustrations and jaw-dropping facts, The Magic of Reality explains a stunningly wide range of natural phenomena. What is stuff made of? How old is the universe? Why do the continents look like disconnected pieces of a puzzle? What causes tsunamis? Why are there so many kinds of plants and animals? Who was the first man, or woman? This is a page-turning, graphic detective story that not only mines all the sciences for its clues but primes the reader to think like a scientist as well.

Richard Dawkins, the world’s most famous evolutionary biologist and one of science education’s most passionate advocates, has spent his career elucidating the wonders of science for adult readers. But now, in a dramatic departure, he has teamed up with acclaimed artist Dave McKean and used his unrivaled explanatory powers to share the magic of science with readers of all ages. This is a treasure trove for anyone who has ever wondered how the world works. Dawkins and McKean have created an illustrated guide to the secrets of our world—and the universe beyond—that will entertain and inform for years to come.

Print length

272 pages
Language

English
Publisher

Free Press
Publication date

October 4, 2011
Dimensions

7.37 x 1.1 x 9.69 inches
ISBN-10

1439192812
ISBN-13

978-1439192818
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Editorial Reviews

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"I wanted to write this book but I wasn't clever enough. Now I've read it, I am"
—Ricky Gervais

“Exhilarating. The clearest and most beautifully written introduction to science I've ever read. Again and again I found myself saying "Oh! So that's how genes work!" (or stars, or tectonic plates, or all the other things he explains). Explanations I thought I knew were clarified; things I never understood were made clear for the first time. My favourite adjective of praise has always been "clear", and this book has clarity all the way through.”
—Philip Pullman, author of The Good Man Jesus and the Scoundrel Christ and the His Dark Materials trilogy

“I am often asked to recommend good books on science for young people. From now on, I will not have to hesitate. The Magic of Reality provides a beautiful, accessible and wide ranging volume that addresses the questions that all of us have about the universe, separating often too-little known facts from too-frequently believed fictions. For this reason it should be a powerful resource for people of all ages, written with the masterful and eloquently literate style of perhaps the best popular expositor of science, Richard Dawkins, and delightfully illustrated by Dave McKean. What more could anyone ask for?”
—Lawrence Krauss is Foundation Professor and Director of the Origins Project at Arizona State University and the author most recently of Quantum Man, and A Universe from Nothing

About the Author

Richard Dawkins is a Fellow of the Royal Society and was the inaugural holder of the Charles Simonyi Chair of Public Understanding of Science at Oxford University. He is the acclaimed author of many books including The Selfish Gene, Climbing Mount Improbable, Unweaving the Rainbow, The Ancestor’s Tale, The God Delusion,and The Greatest Show on Earth. Visit him at RichardDawkins.net.

Dave McKean has illustrated and designed many award-winning comics and books as well as CD covers, a Broadway musical, and creatures for the Harry Potter films.

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Product details

Publisher ‏ : ‎ Free Press; First Edition (October 4, 2011)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Hardcover ‏ : ‎ 272 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 1439192812
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-1439192818
Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 2 pounds
Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 7.37 x 1.1 x 9.69 inches

Best Sellers Rank: #836,147 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #519 in Educational & Nonfiction Graphic Novels
- #2,730 in Folklore & Mythology Studies
- #4,154 in History & Philosophy of Science (Books)

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Richard Dawkins

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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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srvlives

Let's have some intellectual honesty

Reviewed in the United States on April 14, 2016

Verified Purchase

First, if you're just going to write a scathing review (not of the book but of Richard Dawkins) because you blindly follow B.S. artists like William Lane Craig, save it for you tube.
Second, to those complaining about (or defending the virtue of) the book's apparent simplicity, stop pretending you aren't a layman. Isn't everyone else as sick as me of the endless complaints of books which they claim "dumb down" scientific subjects, as if the average Amazon reader in the market for scientific broadening is a trolling world-class scientist? We all know REAL scientists don't have time to review books on Amazon! Quit trying in vain to show off here.
Just review the effing book...and keep it real!
Here's mine: This is one of my favorite Richard Dawkins books. He may be aiming for children in the way the information is presented. But, I think most people (the average adult-like me) is not scientifically brilliant. We can quote basic facts about science, which we are most likely regurgitating anyway-not truly understanding. Dawkins gives simple, yet clear explanations for many scientific truths that escape me. He brings me closer to a clearer understanding of the world around me.
Aiming for children or not, this book will educate anyone who's highest level of science education was in an American high school 20 years ago, despite their viewing of countless Attenborough narrated documentaries.
Many of us think we understand evolution. Nonsense. Most people who say they understand it, have nothing more than a confused idea of it. For those people (of which I am one) you will find the section entitled, "Who was the first person?" a really great place to start. Having a firm grasp of the basic idea of evolution is the first step. Get that before you move on to weightier concepts. Most people have HEARD of evolution, fewer people actually study it.
This book will inspire children to ask deeper and more profound questions about the things they don't yet understand. Parents will fill in some of the many gaps in their own scientific shortcomings...so hopefully they will be able to have discussions with their children about science. It's either that, or look ignorant in front of your children as their knowledge surpasses yours by age fifteen. In fact, this should be a great book to read WITH your child. I am really looking forward to sharing it with my four-year-old in a few years.
Or, you could skip this one and pick up another volume of "biblical stories for children" such as Noah's Ark, or The Garden of Eden. What kind of parent will you be?

373 people found this helpful

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Reid McCormick

what we know...

Reviewed in the United States on June 19, 2020

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Science was one of my favorite subjects in school. Learning science felt like you were learning the secrets of the world, like a magician telling you their secrets. But I was always confused by my scientific education. Typically, I was only given the facts but not the process. Sure, we know dinosaurs lived millions of years ago, but how do we know that? What gave us this incredible knowledge?

The Magic of Reality is an incredible book. It is very well written. Dawkins does not dumb it down nor does he use superfluous scientific jargon. For example, he proposes a basic question like “What are things made of?” then goes about describing carefully what we know about atoms and how we know what we know.

This book inspires me to learn more. It pushes me to think and rethink which is the essence of the scientific process. We should never be stagnant. There is a lot we don’t know, but this doesn’t mean the universe is unknowable instead it should push us to learn more.

17 people found this helpful

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Richard E. Hayes

Awesome Dawkins

Reviewed in the United States on September 16, 2015

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THE MAGIC OF REALITY is a wonderful book, suitable for readers of all ages, explaining what science has learned about the world in the last 400 years. This has been a pretty late development as modern humans have been on earth for about 100,000 years. Science has enabled humans in this recent period to vastly improve the quality of life over what humans enjoyed/endured for the previous 99,600 years. During that long older period, humans invented stories to explain the world, and Dawkins reports many of these stories, myths, before he explains the scientific story. Astronomers, for example, with instruments to extend the power of our senses, have discovered many suns at various stages of their life cycle, so that they can form a story about the birth and death of stars. Our sun, a star, is about 4.5 billion years old, will be too hot in about 2 billion years for life to exist on earth, and "humans will almost certainly be extinct long before then" -- could this knowledge cause us to value life more and stop killing each other?

The ancient stories had a long time to become embedded in our culture and language. The scientific stories are harder to understand sometimes, though Dawkins does a good job giving clearly understandable summaries of some science, but he says he does not fully understand some scientific stories outside his specialty, biology. He teaches us a scientific way of seeing and understanding the world. For example, he discusses "why do bad things happen" and "luck, chance and cause" (p.223). When we say "it happened for a reason" do we mean "a past cause" or "purpose"? Bad things have causes, not necessarily purposes. A great scientist and a great writer, Dawkins earns our gratitude for the dozen books he has written for us non-scientists. This one ought to be given to every young student who has been introduced to some science in school.

14 people found this helpful

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Esme F. Hennessy

The best introduction to Life Sciences available today.

Reviewed in the United States on August 30, 2016

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It was great fun. I am a (retired) academic biologist and I WISH that in the 1940s and early 1950s when I was a scholar and undergraduate student there had been someone like Richard Dawkins to introduce me to the wonders of the Life Sciences. The youngsters today are privileged to have access to works such as he has published.. Like Dawkins, I was born in Africa and had first-hand experience of much of what he so eloquently describes. Like him I was "hooked" on the Biological and Earth sciences early. We were privileged . However I still envy the fledgling scientists who have books like 'The Magic of Reality" to ease their way in to formal biological studies.

62 people found this helpful

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Perfectionist?

Not Five Stars

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on May 21, 2020

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This is a well-written, clear and very readable book. I think readers of all ages would find it informative and enjoyable. However, it is also clearly aimed at a younger audience, which is something I was not aware of when I bought it. I think the publishers and/or Amazon should have provided that information somewhere in an unambiguous way. (I probably should have looked at reviews, where others have also made this criticism - perhaps my review will alert someone.)

I don't want to be unfair - I would have given the book five stars but for this failing.

24 people found this helpful

John1950

An excellent starter in critical thinking for a younger audience.

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on April 14, 2018

Verified Purchase

As a retired biologist (though not a professional evolutionary biologist), I have followed Richard Dawkins books for lay readership ever since he produced the ground breaking 'Selfish Gene'.
This however is a book aimed at the intelligent child and I feel this should be made clear in the marketing blurb

33 people found this helpful

Gazza

A Magnificent Book

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on February 26, 2018

Verified Purchase

A magnificent book. It explains science really well, both for young and old. It's a book that is being continually dipped into by the whole household, which is the sign of a very good book. I also love the way Dawkins writes. He takes care to make his work understandable; you never seem to come across complicated writing in his work, even though he is often explaining complicated ideas. A masterful writer and a beautiful book, especially with the illustrations by Dave McKean, which only adds to the quality of this publication. A definite buy for anyone interested in science.

18 people found this helpful

BobM

Clear and informative, but not exactly challenging

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on January 5, 2021

Verified Purchase

I must admit that when I bought this book I did not realise that it is essentially written for the intelligent teenager who doesn't actually know very much. It's very nicely written, so I enjoyed reading it, but certainly learned very little from it that was new to me. It started quite well with what seemed like a good philosophical approach to explaining the nature of reality, and how we need assistance to perceive many of its forms (e.g. microscopes and spectroscopes), and then moves on to how magic comes into it. I liked his division of magic into three categories, 'supernatural magic', 'stage magic' and what he delightfully calls 'poetic magic' - what we experience when we hear a beautiful piece of music, for example. Curiously, he misses out 'transcendental magic', which is the link between religion and science, but perhaps that is because he eschews religion anyway, and never fails to take a swipe at the gullibility of those who do believe in it.

In short, this is a romp through those all bits of science which he himself thoroughly understands, which is a lot, and perhaps it will indeed stimulate younger readers to take science up. No doubt it was a wise decision on his part to slide smoothly over the things he does not understand (e.g. quantum physics), but as someone who played as a kid with prisms and knew all about how rainbows are formed before I was ten I'm afraid that I found a lot of the book far too simplistic to be worthwhile.

2 people found this helpful

comm88

Stuffily repetitive...

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on September 23, 2021

Verified Purchase

If you've read other works by Richard Dawkins, don't bother with this - it simply tells the same story in ways that are not dissimilar to all that he has said before. It's a proven fact that evolution - not creation - is the answer. There is no "God". Period. There is and can be no "Creator". Fact. Life and all that you see around you gives the lie to the "power of God". We exist by process of serendipitous chemical interaction and, in the vast universe, we are very probably not alone. There is nothing new here. It is simply another emphatic statement that there is no "Godhead" behind anything and no afterlife either. We are what we are NOW and there is nothing left to come. In the end, we return to the chemical processes that made us ... deterioration, dysfunction, chemical breakdown and the end of life as we have known it. To anyone with half a brain to see, here are the answers to the "mystery of life". It really is not a mystery ... not at all.

One person found this helpful

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