The Genetic Book of the Dead: Richard Dawkins ****

When someone came up with the title for this book they were probably thinking deep cultural echoes - I suspect I'm not the only Robert Rankin fan in whom it raised a smile instead, thinking of The Suburban Book of the Dead. That aside, this is a glossy and engaging book showing how physical makeup (phenotype), behaviour and more tell us about the past, with the messenger being (inevitably, this being Richard Dawkins) the genes.

Worthy of comment straight away are the illustrations - this is one of the best illustrated science books I've ever come across. Generally illustrations are either an afterthought, or the book is heavily illustrated and the text is really just an accompaniment to the pictures. Here the full colour images tie in directly to the text. They are not asides, but are 'read' with the text by placing them strategically so the picture is directly with the text that refers to it. Many are photographs, though some are effective paintings by Jana Lenzová.

The first half of the book particularly captivated me. Dawkins starts by showing, for example, how the skin patterns of animals from tigers to insects reflect the history of their ancestors in terms of location, with some stunning examples of concealment. He goes on to take us through, for example, the tortuous evolutionary route that led to the tortoise and to the songs of birds. Perhaps my favourite part of all is the chapter on cuckoos and how members the same species can lay totally different looking eggs to fit with the host the specific female line tends to parasitise - and why the host birds can end up feeding a chick far larger than itself without hesitation.

Some of the later parts of the book are less immediately attractive because they are more about genetic history that does not have the same visual impact, so it becomes less of an illustrated book - and what comes through is more technical and less on the clear impact we can directly experience.

This is a book that continues Dawkins' long time assertion that organisms are vehicles for genes to replicate, hence his original bestseller The Selfish Gene. No one working in the field doubts the importance of genes, but there is now a considerable backlash against the intense focus on the genome, as typified by the 'new biology' described in Philip Ball's How Life Works. Given that Dawkins dedicates a whole chapter to attacking the idea that organisms use genes, rather genes using organisms, but doesn't really take on the idea that the genome is just one of many systems in the body that impact how life develops, and so will have an impact on where a particular animal 'comes from' (the focus of this book), it does make Dawkins look distinctly on the defensive.

To an outsider, it feels as if that Dawkins is in a similar position to that of many physicists at the end of the 19th and start of the 20th century. They struggled with discovering that the physical world is far more complex than had been assumed. Similarly, those for whom genetics is as central to their understanding of life, as is the case with Dawkins, may well be feeling that this 'new biology' is a challenge to fight against, despite it seeming likely to be the correct path forward.

This being the case, this book is interesting for two reasons. One is the fascinating illustration of the legacy current species have from their ancestors past environment and lives, driven certainly significantly by genetics. And the other is the philosophy (or possibly sociology) of science aspect of seeing how a potential Kuhnian paradigm shift impacts the old believers.

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Review by Brian Clegg - See all Brian's online articles or subscribe to a weekly email free here