The Ancestor's Tale: A Pilgrimage to the Dawn of Evolution

The renowned biologist and thinker Richard Dawkins presents his most expansive work in this revised edition that offers a comprehensive look at evolution.

Loosely based on the form of Chaucer's Canterbury Tales, Dawkins's tale takes us modern humans back through four billion years of life on our planet. As the pilgrimage progresses, we join with other organisms at the forty "rendezvous points" where we find a common ancestor. The band of pilgrims swells into a vast crowd as we join first with other primates, then with other mammals, and so on back to the first primordial organism.

Dawkins's brilliant, inventive approach allows us to view the connections between ourselves and all other life in a bracingly novel way. It also lets him shed bright new light on the most compelling aspects of evolutionary history and theory: sexual selection, speciation, convergent evolution, extinction, genetics, plate tectonics, geographical dispersal, and more.

The Ancestor's Tale is at once a far-reaching survey of the latest, best thinking on biology and a fascinating history of life on Earth. Here Dawkins shows us how remarkable we are, how astonishing our history, and how intimate our relationship with the rest of the living world. |

"This clever approach to our extended family tree should prove a natural hit with science readers." Publishers Weekly, Starred

"One of Dawkins's best: a big, almost encyclopedic compendium bursting with information and ideas." Kirkus Reviews, Starred

"This is an ambitious, important book rich with fascinating insights. Also, it couldn't come at a better time." --Carl Zimmer The New York Times Book Review

"Our complete evolutionary story, brilliantly recounted by Dawkins." --Jonathan Keats, Popular Science

"The most modest and winning of his eight books." --John Horgan, Discover