The Selfish Gene

“The Selfish Gene” caused a wave of excitement among biologists and the general public when it was first published in 1976.

The million copy international bestseller, critically acclaimed and translated into over 25 languages.As influential today as when it was first published, The Selfish Gene has become a classic exposition of evolutionary thought.

Professor Dawkins articulates a gene’s eye view of evolution – a view giving centre stage to these persistent units of information, and in which organisms can be seen as vehicles for their replication. This imaginative, powerful, and stylistically brilliant work not only brought the insights of Neo-Darwinism to a wide audience, but galvanized the biologycommunity, generating much debate and stimulating whole new areas of research. Forty years later, its insights remain as relevant today as on the day it was published.

This 40th anniversary edition includes a new epilogue from the author discussing the continuing relevance of these ideas in evolutionary biology today, as well as the original prefaces and foreword, and extracts from early reviews.Oxford Landmark Science books are ‘must-read’ classics of modern science writing which have crystallized big ideas, and shaped the way we think.

Contents

1. Why are people?

2. The replicators

3. Immortal coils

4. The gene machine

5. Aggression: Stability and the selfish machine

6. Genesmanship

7. Family planning

8. Battle of the generations

9. Battle of the sexes

10. You scratch my back, I’ll ride on yours

11. Memes: The new replicators

12. Nice guys finish first

13. The long reach of the gene

Review

In 1976, The Selfish Gene became the first real blockbuster popular science book, a poetic mark in the sand to the public and scientists alike: this idea had to enter our thinking, our research and our culture… The Selfish Gene has attained its own literary and scientific immortality: as long as we study life, it will be read. Adam Rutherford, The Observer

Book Description

The 40th anniversary edition of the million copy international bestseller, with a new epilogue from the author.

About the Author

Richard Dawkins, Emeritus Fellow of New College, Oxford, is one of the most influential science writers and communicators of our generation. He was the first holder of the Charles Simonyi Chair of the Public Understanding of Science at Oxford, a position he held from 1995 until 2008, and is Emeritus Fellow of New College, Oxford. His bestselling books include The Extended Phenotype (1982) and its sequel The Blind Watchmaker (1986), River Out of Eden (1995), Climbing Mount Improbable (1996), Unweaving the Rainbow (1998), A Devil’s Chaplain (2004), The Ancestor’s Tale (2004), and The God Delusion (2007). He has won many literary and scientific awards, including the 1987 Royal Society of Literature Award, the 1990 Michael Faraday Award of the Royal Society, the 1994 Nakayama Prize for Human Science, the 1997 International Cosmos Prize, and the Nierenberg Prize for Science in the Public Interest in 2009.