BOOKS // The Roots and Branches of our Family Tree
For our Kith & Kin issue, we recommend a host of books that push the boundaries of our understanding and open our minds and hearts to our beautiful, interconnected world: its past, present, and future. // HSB
The Genetic Book of the Dead: A Darwinian Reverie
by Richard Dawkins, illustrated by Jana Lenzová
EXCERPT //
Whether you agree with Richard Dawkins on his theory of “selfish genes” (or his staunch atheism), The Genetic Book of the Dead will transport you back to the days when richly illustrated science textbooks thrilled with their exotic animals and never-before-seen plants. Dawkins is, at heart, a teacher, and he lovingly and beautifully describes the natural world. It’s not enough to say that the Mojave Desert lizard is camouflaged; rather, it is an animal “that has its ancestral home painted on its back.” In describing the project, he writes, “The genetic book of the dead is a written description of the world of no particular ancestral individual more than another. It is a description of the world that sculpted the whole gene pool,” subtly attributing an artful intention to our environment even when he knows well that metaphors can get you in trouble as a scientist. The book—written to a scientist in the distant future who will have to read the palimpsest of the earth’s ongoing evolutionary experiment—is an attempt to explain how our genes are both messages from our ancestral environments and glimpses of the future. As Shakespeare wrote, what’s past is prologue. In the present, dear reader, The Genetic Book of the Dead should be in your library. //
For full text and images, consider reading RQ in print, on a Sunday afternoon, sun streaming through your window, coffee in hand, and nary a phone alert within sight or in earshot… just fine words, fine design, and the opportunity to make a stitch in time. // Subscribe or buy a single issue today. // Print is dead. Long live print. //