CLIMBING MOUNT IMPROBABLE

Dawkins, Richard

ISBN 10: 0670850187 / ISBN 13: 9780670850181

Published by Viking, 1996

About this Item

1996. Almost very good condition in a nearly fine dustwrapper. The combination of perfection and improbablity that is epitomised in the seemingly designed perfection living things. Black boards, silver title to spine. B/w photos and illustrations. Second printing. SIGNED by the author (no dedication) to title page. B/w plates were stuck together and now prised apart giving surface paper damage and also imprinting of the facing page. Minor foxing to text block. Else contents clean. Pictorial dustwrapper is lightly scuffed. Packaged with care and promptly dispatched!

Seller Inventory # 1824403

Bibliographic Details

• Title: CLIMBING MOUNT IMPROBABLE
• Publisher: Viking
• Publication Date: 1996
• ISBN 10: 0670850187
• ISBN 13: 9780670850181
• Binding: Hardback
• Illustrator: Ward, Lalla
• Condition: Very Good
• Dust Jacket Condition: Very Good
• Signed: SIGNED - please see description for details.

About this title

Synopsis

Climbing Mount Improbable

Review

How do species evolve? Richard Dawkins, one of the world's most eminent zoologists, likens the process to scaling a huge, Himalaya-size peak, the Mount Improbable of his title. An alpinist does not leap from sea level to the summit; neither does a species utterly change forms overnight, but instead follows a course of "slow, cumulative, one-step-at-a-time, non-random survival of random variants"--a course that Charles Darwin, Dawkins's great hero, called natural selection. Illustrating his arguments with case studies from the natural world, such as the evolution of the eye and the lung, and the coevolution of certain kinds of figs and wasps, Dawkins provides a vigorous, entertaining defense of key Darwinian ideas.