Richard Dawkins comes out with a bang, with his new book, The Greatest Show On Earth, going on the counter attack with creationists, or as he calls them “History Deniers”. He is one of the most well known authors about evolution. His very first book, which was published in 1976, “The Selfish Gene”, and others such as “The Blind Watchmaker”, “The Ancestor’s Tale”, and “The Extended Phenotype”, inspired many evolutionary biologists. This book has been described by Richard Dawkins as “my missing link” and the author explains that all his previous books on evolution have primarily dealt with the power of natural selection and assumed that evolution has happened and that this book will show how we know evolution is true, but this shouldn’t be surprising; science is an edifice of tested assumptions.

Taking the title from the Ringling Brothers and Barnum and Bailey Circus, Dawkins begins by asking us to imagine what it would be like to be a European history teacher who is “continually faced with belligerent demands to give equal time” in his classes to Holocaust deniers. (For him that would be what it’s like to teach the scientific fact of evolution around the world, especially in America, where 40% of us deny that humans evolved from other animals.) These American’s claim instead we were all created as a distinct species not more than 10,000 years ago. Just like the Holocaust deniers, Dawkins claims these people are “history-deniers” too. The antidote to that kind of ignorant thinking is his present work, which presents “the positive evidence that evolution is a fact.”
Dawkins details beautifully the evidence for evolution and assembles it very well, walking us through the natural world to demonstrate that evolution by natural selection is everywhere, (natural selection is the process by which forms of life having traits that better enable them to adapt to specific environmental pressures, as predators, changes in climate, or competition for food or mates will cause the strongest to survive and reproduce in greater numbers than others of their kind, thus ensuring the perpetuation of those favorable traits in succeeding generations) yet we all should know that the evidence for evolution is buried in a fossil record which provides history on how life forms have adapted or naturally selected in changing environments.
“All the fossils that we have, and there are very, very many indeed, occur, without a single authenticated exception, in the right temporal sequence” writes Dawkins, who is a retired Charles Simonyi Professor of the Public Understanding of Science at the University of Oxford. “Evolution could so easily be disproved if just a single fossil turned up in the wrong date order. Evolution has passed this test with flying colors.”
Dawkins’ previous book, “The God Delusion”, still echoes through “The Greatest Show on Earth”, as if the author has some unfinished business to take care of. In this authors opinion, this is a great book. It is very well written, intelligent, vivid, and an easy read, intended for anyone interested in evolutionary biology. If you just have an interest in science non-fiction, start off by reading the “Greatest Show on Earth” because it will give you much of the groundwork for your scientific explorations. The book costs about 25 to 30 dollars, and is definitely worth the price.