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From Publishers Weekly

SignatureReviewed by Jonah LehrerRichard Dawkins begins The Greatest Show on Earth with a short history of his writing career. He explains that all of his previous books have naïvely assumed the fact of evolution, which meant that he never got around to laying out the evidence that it [evolution] is true. This shouldn't be too surprising: science is an edifice of tested assumptions, and just as physicists must assume the truth of gravity before moving on to quantum mechanics, so do biologists depend on the reality of evolution. It's the theory that makes every other theory possible.Yet Dawkins also came to realize that a disturbingly large percentage of the American and British public didn't share his enthusiasm for evolution. In fact, they actively abhorred the idea, since it seemed to contradict the Bible and diminish the role of God. So Dawkins decided to write a book for these history-deniers, in which he would dispassionately demonstrate the truth of evolution beyond sane, informed, intelligent doubt.After only a few pages of The Greatest Show on Earth, however, it becomes clear that Dawkins doesn't do dispassionate, and that he's not particularly interested in convincing believers to believe in evolution. He repeatedly compares creationists and Holocaust deniers, which is a peculiar way of reaching out to the other side. Elsewhere, Dawkins calls those who don't subscribe to evolution ignorant, fatuously ignorant and ridiculous. All of which raises the point: who, exactly, is supposed to read this book? Is Dawkins preaching to the choir or trying to convert the uninformed? While The Greatest Show on Earth might fail as a work of persuasive rhetoric—Dawkins is too angry and acerbic to convince his opponents—it succeeds as an encyclopedic summary of evolutionary biology. If Charles Darwin walked into a 21st-century bookstore and wanted to know how his theory had fared, this is the book he should pick up.Dawkins remains a superb translator of complex scientific concepts. It doesn't matter if he's spinning metaphors for the fossil record (like a spy camera in a murder trial) or deftly explaining the method by which scientists measure the genetic difference between distinct species: he has a way of making the drollest details feel like a revelation. Even if one already believes in the survival of the fittest, there is something thrilling about learning that the hoof of a horse is homologous to the fingernail of the human middle finger, or that some dinosaurs had a second brain of ganglion cells in their pelvis, which helped compensate for the tiny brain in their head. As Darwin famously noted, There is grandeur in this view of life. What Dawkins demonstrates is that this view of life isn't just grand: it's also undeniably true. Color illus. (Sept. 29)Jonah Lehrer is the author of How We Decide and Proust Was a Neuroscientist.

Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From Bookmarks Magazine

"Like a detective reconstructing a crime" (San Francisco Chronicle), Dawkins amasses a mountain of evidence in this richly illustrated, enormously readable explanation of the theory of evolution. Though Dawkins may have softened his attitude toward those who can reconcile their religious beliefs with evolution, he still harbors great hostility toward its detractors, equating them to Holocaust deniers—a label that riled the New York Times Book Review. Objecting to Dawkins's abrasive dogmatism, many critics felt that the biologist is at his best when he forgets his opponents and focuses on the science. He is indeed a master of explaining complex scientific ideas to nonscientific readers, and though The Greatest Show on Earth may not be his best book, it is a well-written, captivating review of the science behind the theory.

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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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设想，你是一位讲授罗马史和拉丁语的老师，急于向学生们传授你对古代世界怀有的满腔热情——包括奥维德（Ovid）的挽歌、贺拉斯（Horace）的颂歌、西塞罗（Cicero）的雄辩中展示的强有力的拉丁语语法，布匿战争中的完美战术，尤利乌斯·凯撒（Juius Caesar）的为将之道和后代君王的骄奢淫逸。这将是一项大工程，耗时持久，需要专注和投入。但与此同时，你发现自己宝贵的时间不断地被人侵夺，你班上学生的注意力被分散到了别处——一群不学无术的人（作为拉丁文学者，你会用ignorami这个词称呼他们）在大声嚷嚷。他们有强大的政治力和雄厚的财力作后盾，在迫切地、不遗余力地试图劝服你那些可怜的学生，告诉他们——罗马人不曾存在过，从来没有什么“罗马帝国”。整个世界只存在于“鲜活的记忆之中”。西班牙语、意大利语、法语、葡萄牙语、加泰罗尼亚语、欧西坦语、罗曼什语——所有这些语言及其方言，都是各自独立地、自动发展而来的，它们没有所谓的祖先语言（如拉丁语）。这时候，你就不能再专注于做一名高雅的古典学者或教师了，你被迫分出宝贵的时间和精力，去防守后院，捍卫“罗马的确存在过”这一命题；对抗这种无知偏见的争辩，会令你精疲力竭、无暇他顾。如果争论尚有闲暇的话，你恐怕要大哭一场。

如果我幻想的这个“拉丁语教师”的例子太没有代表性，我再说个更现实的例子。假设，你是一位教近代历史的老师，但你关于“20世纪的欧洲”的讲座，被人联合抵制，遭到了强烈的质问；或遭到了“大屠杀否认者”的打断（他们组织上有条理、经济上充裕、政治上强大）。同我前面虚构的“罗马否认者”不同，“大屠杀否认者”是确实存在的。这些“否认者”非常聒噪，善于混淆视听，惯于作出博学的样子。他们至少受到某一当代强国总统的支持，他们中还至少包括一名罗马天主教的大主教。设想，你作为一名教授欧洲历史的老师，要不断地面对这些好斗之徒，他们要求教师在课堂上讲授“...

全任何给定情况下的任何给定物种，都有一个最佳的安全距离一一介于太冒险或鲁莽的最近距离，和太浮躁或不愿承担风险的最远距离之间。当危险降临时，逃离得太晚的个体，更容易被杀死。不过虽说我们未必会想到，但也有逃离得太早这种事情——太浮躁的个体从来没有享受到一次饱餐，因为在视线里出现危险的第一个征兆时它们就逃离了。我们很容易忽视“过度避险”的危险。

有趣的是，不知道未来的分类学家，是否可能会遗憾地叹息我们这一代人混搅基因组的方式——例如，把北极鱼的“反冻结”基因转到西红柿内，以使它们免于霜冻。一个使水母发荧光的基因，已经被科学家“借用”并插入了马铃薯的基因组，希望当马铃薯需要浇水时，该基因会使它们亮起来。我甚至获悉一个“艺术家”设计了一个由借助水母的基因而发光的狗群组成的“装置”。这种所谓的设计以自命不凡的“艺术”之名，令所谓的“科学”斯文扫地，让我浑身上下都不舒服。

This is a book about the positive evidence that evolution is a fact. It is not intended as an anti-religion book.

My dear Wallace：

I do not think you understand what I mean by 【the non-blending of certain varieties】. It does not refer to fertility. An instance will explain. 【I crossed the Painted Lady and Purple sweet peas, which are very differently coloured varieties, and got, even out of the same pod, both varieties perfect but none intermediate.】 Something of this kind, I should think, must occur at first with your butterflies . . . Though these cases are in appearance so wonderful, I do not know that they are really more so than every female in the world producing distinct male and female offspring.

该男子对他的研究越来越感兴趣，……着迷于这一试验的优雅理论基础……

书籍介绍

From Publishers Weekly

SignatureReviewed by Jonah LehrerRichard Dawkins begins The Greatest Show on Earth with a short history of his writing career. He explains that all of his previous books have naïvely assumed the fact of evolution, which meant that he never got around to laying out the evidence that it [evolution] is true. This shouldn't be too surprising: science is an edifice of tested assumptions, and just as physicists must assume the truth of gravity before moving on to quantum mechanics, so do biologists depend on the reality of evolution. It's the theory that makes every other theory possible.Yet Dawkins also came to realize that a disturbingly large percentage of the American and British public didn't share his enthusiasm for evolution. In fact, they actively abhorred the idea, since it seemed to contradict the Bible and diminish the role of God. So Dawkins decided to write a book for these history-deniers, in which he would dispassionately demonstrate the truth of evolution beyond sane, informed, intelligent doubt.After only a few pages of The Greatest Show on Earth, however, it becomes clear that Dawkins doesn't do dispassionate, and that he's not particularly interested in convincing believers to believe in evolution. He repeatedly compares creationists and Holocaust deniers, which is a peculiar way of reaching out to the other side. Elsewhere, Dawkins calls those who don't subscribe to evolution ignorant, fatuously ignorant and ridiculous. All of which raises the point: who, exactly, is supposed to read this book? Is Dawkins preaching to the choir or trying to convert the uninformed? While The Greatest Show on Earth might fail as a work of persuasive rhetoric—Dawkins is too angry and acerbic to convince his opponents—it succeeds as an encyclopedic summary of evolutionary biology. If Charles Darwin walked into a 21st-century bookstore and wanted to know how his theory had fared, this is the book he should pick up.Dawkins remains a superb translator of complex scientific concepts. It doesn't matter if he's spinning metaphors for the fossil record (like a spy camera in a murder trial) or deftly explaining the method by which scientists measure the genetic difference between distinct species: he has a way of making the drollest details feel like a revelation. Even if one already believes in the survival of the fittest, there is something thrilling about learning that the hoof of a horse is homologous to the fingernail of the human middle finger, or that some dinosaurs had a second brain of ganglion cells in their pelvis, which helped compensate for the tiny brain in their head. As Darwin famously noted, There is grandeur in this view of life. What Dawkins demonstrates is that this view of life isn't just grand: it's also undeniably true. Color illus. (Sept. 29)Jonah Lehrer is the author of How We Decide and Proust Was a Neuroscientist.

Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From Bookmarks Magazine

"Like a detective reconstructing a crime" (San Francisco Chronicle), Dawkins amasses a mountain of evidence in this richly illustrated, enormously readable explanation of the theory of evolution. Though Dawkins may have softened his attitude toward those who can reconcile their religious beliefs with evolution, he still harbors great hostility toward its detractors, equating them to Holocaust deniers—a label that riled the New York Times Book Review. Objecting to Dawkins's abrasive dogmatism, many critics felt that the biologist is at his best when he forgets his opponents and focuses on the science. He is indeed a master of explaining complex scientific ideas to nonscientific readers, and though The Greatest Show on Earth may not be his best book, it is a well-written, captivating review of the science behind the theory.