An Appetite for Wonder CD: The Making of a Scientist

Dawkins, Richard

3.68

4,061 ratings by Goodreads

9780062283559: An Appetite for Wonder CD: The Making of a Scientist

ISBN 10: 0062283553 ISBN 13: 9780062283559

Publisher: HarperAudio, 2013

In his first memoir, Richard Dawkins shares a rare view into his early life, his intellectual awakening at Oxford, and his path to writing The Selfish Gene. He paints a vivid picture of his idyllic childhood in colonial Africa, and later at boarding school, where he began his career as a skeptic.

Arriving at Oxford in 1959, Dawkins began to study zoology and was introduced to some of the university's legendary mentors as well as its tutorial system. It's to this unique educational system that Dawkins credits his awakening. In 1973, provoked by the dominance of group selection theory and inspired by the work of William Hamilton, Robert Trivers, and John Maynard Smith, he began to write a book he called, jokingly, "my bestseller." It was, of course, The Selfish Gene.

This is an intimate memoir of the childhood and intellectual development of the evolutionary biologist and world-famous atheist and how he came to write what is widely held to be one of the most important books of the twentieth century.

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About the Author:

Richard Dawkins, voted Prospect magazine's #1 World Thinker, has previously published 11 books, all still in print, including The Selfish Gene, the blockbuster bestseller The God Delusion, and his magnum opus The Ancestor's Tale. Dawkins is a fellow of both the Royal Society and the Royal Society of Literature. He was the inaugural holder of the Simonyi Chair for the Public Understanding of Science at Oxford University and is the recipient of numerous honorary degrees and awards, including the International Cosmos Prize of Japan.

Review:

“Fantastic. [Offers] a fascinating glimpse of how one of today’s most influential scientific minds blossomed into himself.” (Maria Popova, Brainpickings.org)

“Surprisingly intimate and moving. ... He is here to find out what makes us tick: to cut through the nonsense to the real stuff.” (The Guardian)

“Dawkins’ style [is] clear and elegant as usual... a personal introduction to an important thinker and populariser of science. ... provide[s] a superb background to the academic and social climate of postwar British research.” (Financial Times)

“The Richard Dawkins that emerges here is a far cry from the strident, abrasive caricature beloved of lazy journalists ... There is no score-settling, but a generous appreciation and admiration of the qualities of others, as well as a transparent love of life, literature - and science.” (The Independent)

“[Here] we have the kindling of Mr. Dawkins’s curiosity, the basis for his unconventionality.” (New York Times)

“...this isn’t Dawkins’s version of My Family and Other Animals. It’s the beauty of ideas that arouses his appetite for wonder: and, more especially, his relentless drive ... towards the answer.” (The Times (UK))

“[An Appetite for Wonder is] a memoir that is funny and modest, absorbing and playful. Dawkins has written a marvelous love letter to science... and for this, the book will touch scientists and science-loving persons. ... an enchanting memoir to read, one that I recommend highly.” (NPR)

“...charming, boring, brilliant, contradictory, conventional, revolutionary. We leave it perhaps not full of facts or conclusions, but with a feeling of knowing the man.” (New York Daily News)

“Richard Dawkins is a hero of mine, so being able to read about how he became the man and the thinker he is, was a particular delight for me. ... Some people get their kicks from Superman’s origin story, or Batman’s origin story ... But for me, it was Richard Dawkins.” (Bill Maher)

“In An Appetite for Wonder Dawkins turns his critical analysis inward to reveal how his mind works and what personal events and cultural forces most shaped his thinking. Destined to become a classic in the annals of science autobiography.” (Michael Shermer, publisher of Skeptic magazine, monthly columnist for Scientific American, and author of The Believing Brain and Why Darwin Matters)

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