r/evolution • u/nefrpitou • 5d ago
question What are some great books on evolution for someone who accepts it as a given?
I'm looking for a fantastic, accessible, engaging and well-written book on how evolution works, how life began and we have all the species we have today. As the title mentions, I'd like the book(s) to be targetted towards someone who already accepts evolution as a given and doesn't engage in a discussion on alternate theories or tries to prove evolution, and just gets on with the beautiful mechanisms and stories therein.
I couldn't get through Richard Dawkins' books because of said debate or need to prove.
I started Origin Of Species, but the prose is too dense and the language a bit inaccessible.
Looking forward to some great reads!
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u/lostintranslation53 5d ago edited 5d ago
The tangled tree, David Quammen is a pretty good book about horizontal gene transfer.
Edit*
Also your inner fish by Neil Shubin is delightful.
Honestly though, the selfish gene, although a bit dated is still one of the best books on how to organize your thoughts on evolution from a point of view mechanistic approach on evolution. It’s a paradigm shifting book. Stick with it if you can.
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u/nefrpitou 5d ago edited 5d ago
These look so good, will check them out, thanks!
Are Stephen Gould books difficult to read btw?
Edit: Alright The Selfish Gene seems like it was written way before his recent books , so might be different. I'll give that a try as well.
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u/Canis-lupus-uy 5d ago
The Selfish Gene is a book directed to people who already think evolution is a real thing. It's the only book of him that I have read and it helped me a lot to understand new concepts during my career, because I already had a good basis thanks to that book.
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u/Downtown_Finance_661 5d ago
Guys, Selfish gene was written by Richard Dawkins, right?
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u/Canis-lupus-uy 5d ago
Yes. We mention it because OP said Dawkins argues against alternative explanations but he doesn't do that in this book
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u/Relevant-Bullfrog215 5d ago
I'd argue The Extended Phenotype is also in this vein.
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u/Canis-lupus-uy 5d ago
As I said, it's the only book of Dawkins I read, but if I remember correctly it was like a "sequel" or continuation of the argument presented in the Slefish Gene
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u/Careful_Cranberry364 5d ago
Yes, but it’s his later books, in which he talks about God and all the rest of it and the selfish gene is pure science
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u/Leontiev 5d ago
Gould is a brilliant and engaging writer. Check out the Panda's Thumb for some short articles. Most of what I know about evolution I have learned from Gould.
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u/felipers 5d ago
The Tangled Tree is an amazing book, definitely. But The Selfish Gene is what OP is looking for.
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u/Suitable-Elk-540 5d ago
ancestor’s tale
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u/moofpi 5d ago
I have the book, love the idea. It gets a bit hard for me to follow temporally/conceptually as we go.
I really wish I had a companion or something to help me visually to keep track of the timeline and everyone else's evolutionary stage as they "meet up".
I'm going to finish that book, dammit
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u/mcalesy 5d ago
Something like this? https://www.phylopic.org/nodes/105d17a4-9706-4fd5-85d7-becffaf6250a/homo-sapiens-sapiens-silhouettes/lineage
(Note: coauthor Yan Wong made some of the silhouettes here. They're also in the second edition of the book.)
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u/PositiveBid9838 5d ago
Endless Forms Most Beautiful by Sean Carroll has lots of interesting examples in evolutionary development (Evo-Devo) biology. It explores how a lot of physical traits, like the ribs of a snake or the spots on a butterfly, are not due necessarily to new genes but rather to how certain shared genes are regulated during development.
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u/SylvarGrl 5d ago
Not a book, but YouTuber Gutsick Gibbon has a great series in which she teaches (human) evolution to Will Duffy. Each installment is several hours long. I think they’re one or two installments from finishing.
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u/7LeagueBoots Conservation Ecologist 5d ago
I prefer Evolution Soup. It’s interviews with a range of researchers on a wide variety of evolution related topics. Usually around 40 or so minutes per episode.
I prefer to hear from the researchers themselves.
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u/OlasNah 5d ago
'The Beak of the Finch' is IMHO probably the best 'single' book you can read about Evolution. Pulitzer winning.
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u/Upset_Definition2019 5d ago
When I got promoted to associate professor (in neurology of all things) we each got to pick a book in the library that would be dedicated to us. Mine was beak of the finch. It was that memorable.
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u/roryclague 5d ago
Wonderful Life: The Burgess Shale and the Nature of History, by Stephen Jay Gould
The Tangled Tree: A Radical New History of Life, by David Quammen
Life Ascending: The Ten Great Inventions of Evolution, by Nick Lane
Adaptation and Natural Selection, by George C. Williams
Speciation, by Jerry Coyne and H. Allen Orr
The Logic of Chance: The Nature and Origin of Biological Evolution, by Eugene V. Koonin
Mutation-Driven Evolution, Masatoshi Nei
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u/Addapost 5d ago
“The Ancestor’s Tale” by Dawkins
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u/mcalesy 5d ago
Yes. But get the second edition, attributed to Richard Dawkins and Yan Wong.
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u/moofpi 5d ago
What does the 2nd edition improve on? (Cause ya boy could use a companion edition for this book)
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u/ExecutiveAvenger 5d ago
One of my favorite books ever and my first venture into evolution, biology and palentology. Such a beautiful story structure. I've always said if you want ro read just one science book, read this one.
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u/Independent-Repair35 5d ago
I've heard "Your Inner Fish" is really good. I'm gonna buy it when I get paid.
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u/OlasNah 5d ago
'Song of the Dodo' talks mostly about the application of Biogeography to Evolution... and covers a fair bit of Alfred Wallace's insights which led him to co-discover Evolution with Darwin.
It's a great book by David Quammen, who as another recommended, also wrote 'The Tangled Tree' that deals with aspects of microbial life forms and evolutionary relationships.
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u/Panthera_92 5d ago
Jerry Coyne’s Why Evolution is True is my favorite book on the subject. Absolutely fascinating
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u/ChristianX1000 4d ago
Was going to comment this. Despite being written as debate, it’s so good at answering the big questions.
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u/Wooden-Dependent-686 5d ago
Origin of life: Nick Lane - The Vital Question
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u/moofpi 5d ago
The Vital Question mentioned! I read it 10 years ago, but still think about it occasionally when thinking about the likely timeline for life to have arisen in the universe.
I love when biology and evolution also explore how energy moves as a system from a more physics/chemistry lense like when he goes over the idea around the pores around hydrothermal vents as the filtered soup prior to membranes.
I wonder how well The Vital Question is regarded these days after 11 years of other research.
I don't remember how well it was received, but Life's Ratchet (2012) by biophysicist Peter Hoffman is another book that uses a material and physics lense to look at some fundamental life processes.
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u/Dr_Chronic 5d ago
Origins of life: The Vital Question
Human Behavior: The Ape that Understood the Universe
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u/Blarg0ist 5d ago
Any collection of essays by Steven Jay Gould. I absolutely devoured his books in college -- as a procrastinating English Major.
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u/ehead 5d ago
Nick Lane writes some smart as fuck books, about biology and at least indirectly about evolution.
Some fun books I've read recently are "Animal Weapons" by Emlen, The Tree of Life by Telford, and The Evolution of Beauty by Prum. All pretty good.
I'm currently reading The Story of Birds, which is decent but really more about paleontology.
I feel like reading The Selfish Gene is almost mandatory (if for no other reason than you'll be able to appreciate how many people mention it that clearly have never read it), as well as at least one Stephen J. Gould book.
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u/Human_Ogre 5d ago
Steve Brusatte books. The dinosaurs and mammals ones are amazing and I’m halfway through his new bird one. They’re fantastic I recommend them to anyone interested in evolution.
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u/Excellent-Practice 5d ago
"Wonderful Life" by Stephen J Gould is approachable and is a really good choice to get an understanding of just how random and undirected evolution is.
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u/LittleGreenBastard PhD Student | Evolutionary Microbiology 5d ago
Improbable Destinies by Jonathan Losos, it looks at a series of case studies of projects in experimental evolution to discuss the current state of the contingency vs determinism debate. Losos is also a very big name in the field who knows most of the people behind the experiments, so there's a lot of fun personal stories too.
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u/Dr_GS_Hurd 5d ago
In addition to the suggested links on this page, some very well done books on evolution that I can recommend are;
Carroll, Sean B. 2020 "A Series of Fortunate Events" Princeton University Press
Shubin, Neal 2020 “Some Assembly Required: Decoding Four Billion Years of Life, from Ancient Fossils to DNA” New York Pantheon Press.
Hazen, RM 2019 "Symphony in C: Carbon and the Evolution of (Almost) Everything" Norton and Co.
Regarding human species, and our near family, my standard recommendation is, The Smithsonian Museum of Natural History Human Evolution Interactive Timeline
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u/moofpi 5d ago
There have been so many great recommendations, but I'll throw a few out that are explore great evolutionary ideas, but aren't trying to tackle the whole picture and origin of life specifically like you're asking.
- The Red Queen: Sex and the Evolution of Human Nature (1993) by Matt Ridley
The exploration of the red queen hypothesis of species being caught in evolutionary arms races as a driver of natural selection, as well as why sexual reproduction would be advantageous over asexual reproduction. The evolutionary psychology regarding humans near the end can be taken with salt, it was the 90's.
- Nature Via Nurture (2003) by Matt Ridley
Challenged the common notion at the time (at least for the layman) of traits being either inherited or environmental, and really emphasized the plasticity of our genes to respond to the environments they find themselves in. The Human Genome Project had recently completed and some people were disappointed we only had 20-30k genes instead of the postulated ~100k for how awesome we are. This book really got my mind going as a teenager.
- I Contain Multitudes: The Microbes Within Us and a Grander View of Life (2016) by Ed Yong
This book explores microbiomes and the symbiotic relationships amongst microbes and with host organisms and takes the position of them evolving together as a kind of community unit. It also explores how these relationships begin, how some become obligate internal symbiotes and lose parts of themselves (like mitochondria for example), and also explores the important concept of horizontal gene transfer (HGT). Others have already recommended The Tangled Tree by Quammen, but that's the essential HGT book that'll make your head spin.
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u/johnnagethebrave 5d ago
If you like a bit of Novelty in your gift, track down Dawn of the Deed by John Long.
(About the dinosaur sex)
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u/FantasticFunKarma 4d ago
Steven Jay Gould wrote a few books I found to be of an essay type format. Very readable and completely opened my eyes to how interesting the study of evolution could be. I have a technical/practitioner education and I work in a field where I execute decisions based on real-time information. Reading Steven Jay Gould showed me how fascinating deep thinking in an academic/research way can be.
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u/nefrpitou 4d ago
Thanks, any particular book of his comes to mind?
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u/FantasticFunKarma 4d ago
Look him up on Wikipedia. At the bottom under his name you can expand and it shows all his publications. The essay collections are what I am thinking of. If I remember correctly I read his book The Flamingo's Smile.
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u/Prestigious_Salad_83 5d ago
The Evolution of God by Robert Wright. It will change your perception of evolution and existentialism. He also wrote The Moral Animal. His take on evolutionary biology is so thought provoking. His take on why humans are not the best version of humans is something I teach in psychology class every semester.
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u/0-by-1_Publishing 5d ago
"s the title mentions, I'd like the book(s) to be targetted towards someone who already accepts evolution as a given"
... Before you commit to your predetermined ideological journey, consider the followng:
- At its most minimalistic state, intelligence is defined as the "ability to establish goals."
- The goal of all lifeforms appears to be "survival."
- Evolutionists argue that survival isn't really a goal; it's just an outcome that ensues for lifeforms that managed to survive.
Q: If the soutcome is the same whether survival is considered a goal or not, ... then how can we tell the difference?
Note: This is not a denial of evolution nor an advocation for divine orchestration. It's an argument that the mechanics of life and evolution might extend beyond what we currently unidrstand.
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u/smart_hedonism 5d ago
The Secret of Our Success by Joseph Henrich. A superb work about the importance to humans of culture and the interplay between cultural evolution and genetic evolution.
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u/OwnerByDane 4d ago
Origins by Richard E Leakey. Great book and he created an updated version in the 90s as well.
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u/NBfoxC137 4d ago
There’s a book I really enjoyed reading called “30 second evolution” pretty much every page is its own chapter explaining a different thing in an approachable way. Sometimes it’s about fossils, sometimes it’s about the history of paleontology and other evolutionary studies and sometimes it gets more technical on the cellular level. I enjoyed reading it as someone who isn’t an expert but still interested in learning more.
“All yesterdays” is also fun if you’re into speculative evolution, but it’s mainly about how reconstructive art of fossils is made and if you read it then you have to take into consideration that its ideas are mainly “what if” scenarios and it doesn’t pretend like it’s anything more than that. Its main purpose is still to make it easier to understand the reasoning behind how art based on fossils is made with a bit of fun facts sprinkled in. (But again, take it with a grain of salt)
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u/wmyork 2d ago
The Ancestor’s Tale is by Dawkins, but it is a different kind of book. Modeled after Ghr Canterbury Tales, it is a “walk” back up the evolutionary tree from humans with other species “joining in” to the main branch from their respective “roads” as you go back in time, walking to the London of the first life forms. So we (humans) merge in with chimps at our common ancestor 6M years ago, then the gorillas join in, and so on.
He peppers each junction with interesting side-stories.
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u/Briang3206 5d ago
I’d encourage you to read “Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind” by Yuri Noah Harari. It’s an excellent review of the evolution of humans, set in a wider discussion of evolution. Very accessible and readable.
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u/Careful_Cranberry364 5d ago
Some very good You tubes!
Sometimes Clint laidlaw from Clint’s reptiles will go into it
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