Books do Furnish a Life, Richard Dawkins
Books do Furnish a Life, Richard Dawkins
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Books do Furnish a Life
An electrifying celebration of science writing

Author: Richard Dawkins

Narrator: Richard Dawkins, Neil deGrasse Tyson, Adam Hart-Davis, Steven Pinker, Christopher Hitchens, Lawrence Krauss, Matt Ridley, Lalla Ward

Unabridged: 15 hr 48 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Published: 05/06/2021

Synopsis

Brought to you by Penguin.

Including conversations with Neil DeGrasse Tyson, Steven Pinker, Matt Ridley and more, this is an essential guide to the most exciting ideas of our time and their proponents from our most brilliant science communicator. This audio edition also includes Richard Dawkins in conversation with Christopher Hitchens, in what was to be Christopher Hitchens' last interview before his death in 2011.

Books Do Furnish a Life is divided by theme, including celebrating nature, exploring humanity, and interrogating faith. For the first time, it brings together Richard Dawkins' forewords, afterwords and introductions to the work of some of the leading thinkers of our age - Carl Sagan, Lawrence Krauss, Jacob Bronowski, Lewis Wolpert - with a selection of his reviews to provide an electrifying celebration of science writing, both fiction and non-fiction. It is also a sparkling addition to Dawkins' own remarkable canon of work.

'Richard Dawkins is a thunderously gifted science writer.' Sunday Times

© Richard Dawkins 2021 (P) Penguin Audio 2021

About Richard Dawkins

Richard Dawkins is one of the most influential scientists of our time. The New York Times Book Review has hailed him as a writer who "understands the issues so clearly that he forces his reader to understand them too." Recently awarded the distinction of "public intellectual" in Britain, Dawkins is the Charles Simonyi Professor of the Public Understanding of Science at Oxford University.

Reviews

Goodreads review by Tanja on October 01, 2022

This was a surprisingly delightful reading experience. The audio version includes several exchanges with other scientists and illuminaries such as Christopher Hitchens and Neil deGrasse Tyson. Not all of these people agree with Dawkins, and listening to their banter is at times hilarious and definit......more

Goodreads review by MacWithBooksonMountains on March 09, 2024

This book represents a collection of Dawkins’ conversations with various icons of science including Neil degrasse Thyson, Carl Sagan and Lawrence Krauss. It’s simply beautiful to listen to these great minds discussing various topics in such a relaxed atmosphere. The giants who popularized science, i......more

Goodreads review by Udit on March 15, 2022

The book is more like a collection of essays, foreword and reviews Dawkins wrote for other books and themes. I enjoyed all of it because they are exploring faith, humanity and nature simultaneously. There are interactions between some of the greatest science communicators like Neil deGrasse Tyson, S......more

Goodreads review by Philémon on June 17, 2021

This may be the best book to introduce one to Richard Dawkins' work and thoughts. It is a collection of reviews, forewords, afterwords and interviews consistently organised in 6 sections, each of them displaying a part of Dawkins' work and commitment.......more

Goodreads review by Michael on April 28, 2024

This is a collection of writings and conversations from Dawkins. Most of the writings are introductions, forewords, afterwords, and reviews. The topics center around evolution, skepticism, religion, and writing. A repeating occurrence is the explanation of evolution, including the book Selfish Gene.......more

Quotes

Richard Dawkins is fine scientist, rigorous thinker and supremely gifted writer. His books are justly famous, but his shorter works are just as good. Here is a rich feast of his essays, reviews, forewords, squibs and conversations, in which talent and passion are married to deep knowledge. Matt Ridley, author of How Innovation Works

Dawkins' books are full of passion as well as reason, human warmth as well as rational detachment, literature as well as science. Richard Dawkins is one of the finest English prose stylists of the past fifty years. Plenty of other scientists write well, but no one writes like Dawkins.
This collection is mostly made up of reviews, introductions and the like-and anyone who writes at a virtuoso level for such ephemera is a wordsmith to be reckoned with. (Compare Samuel Johnson's masterpieces in similar genres.) Even the shortest pieces are not one-line, workaday reviews, but full of originality and insight...
The content of the book is as excellent as its style-indeed, the two are intertwined. Some pieces are short, some long, all fascinating. The range is also astonishing: here is Dawkins the teacher, the scholar, the polemicist, the joker, the aesthete, the poet, the satirist, the man of compassion as well as indignation, the slayer of superstition and, above all, the scientist. With his treatment of everything from evolutionary psychology to the temptations of supposedly sophisticated theology, from African Eve to the beauty of the Galápagos, from the virtual reality software in our brains to postmodern baloney and the inspiration to be found in great science fiction, Dawkins excites, surprises and nourishes the mind. Areo Magazine

Much more than just a collection of journalism, this has an overarching unity and presents a panoramic survey of his intellectual career. There are occasional moments of delicious savagery as Dawkins dismantles an opponent. Much more often he celebrates the work of fellow scientists and throughout the entire 460 pages, one can enjoy the unfailing clarity of his thought and prose, as well as the grandeur of his vision of life on Earth. Spectator

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