The Greatest Show on Earth: The Evidence for Evolution
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| Author | Richard Dawkins |
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| Country | United Kingdom |
| Language | English |
| Subject | Evolution |
| Publisher | Free Press, Transworld |
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Publication date
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3 September 2009 (UK) 22 September 2009 (US) |
| Media type | Print, e-book, audiobook |
| Pages | 470 pp. |
| ISBN | |
| OCLC | 390663505 |
| Preceded by | The God Delusion |
| Followed by | The Magic of Reality: How We Know What's Really True |
The Greatest Show on Earth: The Evidence for Evolution is a 2009 book by British biologist Richard Dawkins, which was released on 3 September 2009 in the UK and on 22 September 2009 in the US. It sets out the evidence for biological evolution, and is Dawkins's 10th book, following his best-selling critique of religion The God Delusion (2006) and The Ancestor's Tale (2004), which traced human ancestry back to the dawn of life.
The book is published in the United Kingdom and Commonwealth nations by Transworld, and in the United States by Free Press. In its first week of release, it topped The Sunday Times' Bestseller list, with more than twice the sales of its nearest competitor. An audiobook version has also been released, read by Dawkins and his wife Lalla Ward.
This book is my personal summary of the evidence that the 'theory' of evolution is actually a fact—as incontrovertible a fact as any in science.
Richard Dawkins has written a number of books about evolution. beginning with The Selfish Gene (1976) and The Extended Phenotype (1982). These he followed with three books that attempted to address common misunderstandings about evolution. His documentary series The Genius of Charles Darwin looks at Darwin's life and some of the evidence for evolution.
However, when he looked back at the work he had published, he felt that he had never comprehensively addressed the evidence of common descent. Dawkins believed that opposition to evolution was as strong as ever, despite the overwhelming, and growing, body of evidence for the theory. He started writing The Greatest Show on Earth during his final months as Charles Simonyi Professor for the Public Understanding of Science (Marcus du Sautoy now holds the position) and finished it in retirement. He thought that 2009, the bicentennial of Darwin's birth and 150th anniversary of his book On the Origin of Species, was the perfect time for such a work. Other authors have written similar books recently, such as Jerry Coyne's Why Evolution is True which Dawkins highly recommends.
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