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Two-colour throughout.
Four-colour section.
New chapters on fossil record and coevolution.
Beginning of chapter summaries and chapter end reviews.
With an accompanying multi-media CD ROM.

719 pages, Hardcover

First published October 11, 1989

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541 people want to read

About the author

Mark Ridley

23 books23 followers

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5 stars
80 (40%)
4 stars
74 (37%)
3 stars
32 (16%)
2 stars
7 (3%)
1 star
3 (1%)
Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews
Profile Image for Krishan.
59 reviews21 followers
July 27, 2009
an incredibly phat smorgasboard of essays and commentary on evolutionary theory. well worth the time.
5 reviews
July 21, 2019
Poorly written. The syntax is easy to read but it's long winded. I skip over the equations because they're too hard to comprehend, but the author does not seem that bright; he struggles with what "evolution" and "natural selection" conceptually fundamentally mean, and he claims that the existence of sexual reproduction is an evolutionary mystery.
I have read a third of the book (200 pages- I'm a slow reader) as my principal activity for the last two days and intend to finish it, only skipping occasional short sections.
I've read a tiny bit of Futuyma's Evolutionary Biology and anticipate that it will be better (the text is a bit less "matte"; Evolution is easy to accidentally gloss over without it making an impression on my mind). It's supposed to be more advanced, but it's about the same length- the only difference I see is that the format is less fancy and attractive.
This book is probably good for more technical people. Despite his flaws, the author is obviously very well-versed in his subject. His References seems impossibly long. It has 33 pages and packs 30 papers per page- that's 3 pages of very tightly listed citations that have authors whose names start with H. How did he read all that?!
*The full text is available for free online.
**There is a good website pairing with this book with free access, that you can look up individual topics and vocabulary on.
***The author denies climate change (outside this book) and disagrees with group selection. Judge as you will.
Profile Image for Sheila.
79 reviews8 followers
December 30, 2011
I never finished the book, it's too technical for me, but it's very well written.
Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews

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