The Genetic Book of the Dead by Richard Dawkins review – the great biologist’s swansong

A wonderful but thoroughly conventional celebration of the science of evolution

All things must pass, but some leave legacies. That is the story of life on Earth. Fossilised remains of organisms represent just one of the various treasure troves of information about how life used to be, one set of clues to why it is the way it is today. In the early 20th century, genes entered the storehouse of evidence for& evolution, first as theoretical particles, later as the unit of selection, and today with molecular precision. Some 165 years after Darwin’s Origin of Species, evolution by natural selection is incontrovertible, the proof& of it irrefutable and bounteous.

Richard Dawkins has done the lord’s work in sharing this radical idea for more than a third of that time, partly through research, but with wider impact in his general writing. This book, one of nearly a dozen he has written about evolution, looks set to be& his last (he has called a tour to& support it The Final Bow).