{"product_id":"darwins-ghost-isbn-9780345422774","title":"Darwin's Ghost","description":"Charles Darwin's The Origin of Species is probably the best-known, least-read book. One of the most important achievements of the past millennium, it did for biology what Galileo did for astronomy: made it into a single science rather than a collection of unrelated facts. Important though Origin remains, its examples and intricate Victorian prose are now a century and a half old. They are ripe for renewal and reaffirmation. Writing as \"Darwin's ghost,\" eminent geneticist Steve Jones updates this seminal work—and restates evolution's case for the 21st century.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eJones is a writer of engaging wit and dazzling erudition and has been called \"the British Carl Sagan.\" Using modern examples—the AIDS virus, the puzzles of sexual selection, the physiology and psychology of pets, and the unparalleled genetic success of our own species—he shows the power and immediacy of Darwin's great argument and makes us appreciate how it makes life make sense. Eye-opening and entertaining, filled with astonishing facts, amusing anecdotes, and the very latest research, Darwin's Ghost is contemporary science writing at its very best.\"There are few better or more entertaining accounts of the evolutionary process in print today than Darwin's Ghost.\"\u003cbr\u003e--The New York Times Book Review\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"FASCINATING AND WITTY. . . WRITTEN WITH GREAT AUTHORITY AND A FLUID STYLE . . . [STEVE JONES IS A] SUPERIOR COMMUNICATOR--HUMANE, APPROACHABLE, FUNNY.\"\u003cbr\u003e--The Boston Sunday GlobeSteve Jones is Professor of Genetics at University College London and has worked at universities in the U.S., Australia and Africa. His previous books include\u003ci\u003e The Language of the Genes \u003c\/i\u003eand\u003ci\u003e In the Blood.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/i\u003eAccording to a 1991 opinion poll, a hundred million Americans believe\u003cbr\u003ethat \"God created man pretty much in his present form at one time during\u003cbr\u003ethe last ten thousand years.\" A large majority saw no reason to oppose\u003cbr\u003ethe teaching of creationism in schools. They followed in a long\u003cbr\u003etradition. A text of 1923, Hell and the High Schools, claimed that: \"The\u003cbr\u003eGermans who poisoned the wells and springs of northern France and\u003cbr\u003eBelgium and fed little children poisoned candy were angels compared to\u003cbr\u003ethe text-book writers and publishers who are poisoning the books used in\u003cbr\u003eour schools . . . Next to the fall of Adam and Eve, Evolution and the\u003cbr\u003eteaching of Evolution in tax-supported schools is the greatest curse\u003cbr\u003ethat ever fell upon this earth.\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eFifty pieces of legislation tried to put a stop to the subject. All\u003cbr\u003efailed. Undeterred, Alabama called for a note to be pasted into\u003cbr\u003etextbooks: \"This book may discuss evolution, a controversial theory some\u003cbr\u003escientists give as a scientific explanation for the origin of living\u003cbr\u003ethings, such as plants, animals and humans . . . No one was present when\u003cbr\u003elife first appeared on earth. Therefore, any statement about life's\u003cbr\u003eorigins should be considered as theory, not fact.\" In 1999 the Kansas\u003cbr\u003eBoard of Education voted to remove evolution from the school curriculum\u003cbr\u003eand no doubt other states will try similar tricks.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eSuch intolerance is new. At the end of the last century few clerics\u003cbr\u003eopposed the idea of evolution. In spite of polemic against a\u003cbr\u003e\"genealogical table which begins in the mud, has a monkey in the middle\u003cbr\u003eand an infidel at the tail\" most were ready to accept a compromise\u003cbr\u003ebetween The Origin and the Bible. A Day of Creation might be millions of\u003cbr\u003eyears long, or might represent six real days that marked the origin of a\u003cbr\u003espiritual Man after the long ages it took all else to evolve. Real\u003cbr\u003ebigotry had to wait for modern times.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThe creationist movement is part of a triumphal New Ignorance that rules\u003cbr\u003ein many places, the United States more than most. In fact, the majority\u003cbr\u003eof those determined to tell lies to children believe in Darwin's theory\u003cbr\u003eand understand how it works, without noticing. Evolution is embedded in\u003cbr\u003ethe American consciousness for a simple and terrible reason. For the\u003cbr\u003epast two decades the nation has lived through an episode that has, with\u003cbr\u003eextraordinary speed, laid bare the argument of The Origin of Species.\u003cbr\u003eThe organism involved was unknown in the nineteenth century, but is now\u003cbr\u003efamiliar. It is the AIDS virus.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eCreationists find it easy to accept the science of AIDS. Its arrival so\u003cbr\u003eclose to the millennium and the Last Judgment is a useful illustration\u003cbr\u003eof God's wrath. Homosexuals, they claim, have declared war on nature,\u003cbr\u003eand nature has exacted an awful retribution. Fundamentalists admit the\u003cbr\u003eevolution of a virus as nature's revenge but will not concede that the\u003cbr\u003esame process acts upon life as a whole.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eEven to anti-evolutionists, AIDS is proof of descent with modification\u003cbr\u003ebecause they can see it happening. Its agent has changed in its brief\u003cbr\u003ehistory and has adapted to overcome the many challenges with which it is\u003cbr\u003efaced. As death approaches, a patient may be the home of\u003cbr\u003ecreatures--descendants of those that infected him--as different as are\u003cbr\u003ehumans and apes. Every continent, with its own sexual habits, has its\u003cbr\u003eown exquisitely adjusted set of viruses; and AIDS has relatives in\u003cbr\u003eanimals quite different from ourselves. Darwin would have been delighted\u003cbr\u003eto see the workings of his machine so starkly exposed.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eScience makes patterns from ideas. If AIDS can evolve, so can anything\u003cbr\u003eelse. The Origin uses freshwater bears and flying fish to make a case\u003cbr\u003ethat applies to all forms of life. For its opponents, in contrast, what\u003cbr\u003eis true for viruses cannot be true of birds or fish, let alone a man.\u003cbr\u003eThe existence of an animal as unlikely as a whale is, for them, proof\u003cbr\u003ethat evolution does not work.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThe other view of the origin of whales, men or viruses is simple. As\u003cbr\u003emany more individuals of each species are born than can possibly survive\u003cbr\u003eand as, consequently, there is a frequently recurring struggle for\u003cbr\u003eexistence, it follows that any being, if it vary however slightly in any\u003cbr\u003emanner profitable to itself, under the complex and sometimes varying\u003cbr\u003econditions of life, will have a better chance of surviving, and thus be\u003cbr\u003enaturally selected. From the strong principle of inheritance, any\u003cbr\u003eselected variety will tend to propagate its new and modified form.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eEvery part of Darwin's thesis is open to test. The clues--from fossils,\u003cbr\u003egenes or geography--differ in each case, but from all of them comes the\u003cbr\u003econclusion that the whole of life is kin. That is no mere assertion, but\u003cbr\u003ea chain of deduction with every link complete. The biography of the AIDS\u003cbr\u003evirus, one of Nature's newest and tiniest products, is almost complete\u003cbr\u003eand that of whales--the largest animals ever seen--is fragmentary, but\u003cbr\u003ethey are cousins under the skin. The AIDS virus is change seen under the\u003cbr\u003emicroscope, and the whale the same process viewed, in glimpses and over\u003cbr\u003elong ages, through a biological telescope. Evolution at the extremes of\u003cbr\u003esize is an apt prelude to the great drama that is Darwinism.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e","brand":"Ballantine Books","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":46301063053541,"sku":"NP9780345422774","price":21.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1842\/7735\/files\/9780345422774.jpg?v=1767724737","url":"https:\/\/k12savings.com\/es\/products\/darwins-ghost-isbn-9780345422774","provider":"K12savings","version":"1.0","type":"link"}