"The Greatest Show on Earth"

(The Evidence for Evolution)
-by richard dawkins
2009
As is often the case with dawkins, superlatives can feel like understatement. Brilliant? Yes...in style, authority, and above all, necessity. The only thing this ethologist, biologist, and former Professor for Public Understanding at Oxford is not, is dispassionate. He's given to occasional fits of rhapsodic waxing over the wonders of life and the universe, which make the "miracles" of mythology or religion seem tawdry.
This book joins "The Selfish Gene" and "The Ancestor's Tale" as dawkins' most towering. The only thing that holds this one back are the tangents and specificity (which will delight many who already embrace his points, but might make this too challenging for any believers who are on the fence). When he's at his best, you won't find a science author more readable...but there are times when even I felt bogged down.
That aside, this is the book that will make you say "Why didn't he write this BEFORE all the others?" In retrospect, it was a glaring hole - all his earlier works assume an acceptance of evolution as a viable (indeed, the only viable) way to explain life on Earth. This one drops that assumption, and offers an avalanche of evidence showing that evolution is far more than theory. Indeed, that which doubters would assume is the primary proof, the fossil record, dawkins reveals as almost an afterthought. Driving that point home is the fact that darwin, who made the greatest leap in scientific thinking ever, did so at a time when there was, for all practical purposes, zero fossil record. Natural clocks, geostratification, continental drift, DNA, and embryological evidence are all fleshed out by richard. Most fascinating is the de-pantsing of the argument by apparent design - with such staggeringly complex and graceful life forms as abound on this planet, all "perfectly" fitted to their environment, how could life be anything other than the result of conscious engineering? That illusion only holds up when you look at a lion or humyn from the outside, however. Inside, biology is a tinker toy mess, with all sorts of staggering inefficiencies which could only be a relic of an ancestor radically different.
His foray into the science behind sea mammals who possess land-oriented lungs, is wondrous. Would you care to guess which is the only animal we now think may have left the sea, then returned, then left again? Make up your damned minds, turtles!
With exquisite illustrations to delight the visual learners, this book is a treasure (one, dare i say, beyond measure).