Wide ranging selection of writings from the world's leading biologists, on topics from global ecology to behaviour and genetics, the biosphere to the cell and DNA. With contributions from, amongst others, Francis Crick, Richard Dawkins, James Lovelock, Lynn Margulis, John Maynard Smith and EO Wilson.
Connie Barlow is a science writer.
A crash course in modern biological thought... Many of the unmissable modem masters are here: James Lovelock on Gaia, Lynn Margulis and Dorion Sagan on symbiosis in the cell, Robert Axelrod and William Hamilton on the evolution of cooperation, E.O. Wilson on sociobiology and Richard Dawkins on selfish genes and memes. It is a heady mix one that covers the spectrum from holism to reductionism, without giving houseroom to any but the best writers... This is a book with a number of different messages. Yet those messages are often so powerful - and the writing so persuasive - that somehow you long for them all to be true. Bold and shocking biology has that effect on people. --Stephen Young, New Scientist