Science Department

Books: The Greatest Show on Earth – The Evidence for Evolution by Richard Dawkins

October 22, 2009

Publisher: Bantam

The Greatest Show on Earth

Biology teachers increasingly find themselves buttonholed by students seeking to embarrass them on topics as diverse as carbon dating and the second law of thermodynamics, as a prelude to an assault on evolution itself.

 This book should be required reading for anyone with any doubt about the evidence for evolution.

The Greatest Show On Earth lays it all out. It’s a book about evidence, and when the evidence is weak, Dawkins says so, and explains why. It contains a couple of mistakes, there are too many footnotes, and it could use another edit.

And in place of his usual aggression, Dawkins adopts an avuncular style that grates somewhat. But no matter. This book is designed, intelligently, to do exactly what it says on the tin.
Even some of Dawkins’s admirers felt that The God Delusion was an embarrassment. The Greatest Show On Earth is “not intended as an anti-religious book. I’ve done that, it’s another T-shirt, this is not the place to wear it again,” he says. And so he moves on, with disarming lucidity.

The evidence for evolution is so overwhelming that one can only wonder why so many people try so hard to dismiss it. What, exactly, are they afraid of? On this issue, The Greatest Show On Earth, rightly, keeps its own counsel.

Review: Dr. Henry Gee

Dr Henry Gee is a senior editor of the journal Nature

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