The Oxford Book of Modern Science Writing by Richard Dawkins, Ed.
The Oxford Book of Modern Science Writing by Richard Dawkins
This is a great book, but it will cost you. Right after I finished reading it, I ordered three or four books from its featured authors right away, and put several more on my wishlist. And as to how length and time are relative, this book is its own highly distinguished example: the excerpts from scientific fields I know next to nothing about were much too short, while those from scientific fields I have a little more knowledge, or had even read the books the excerpts were taken from, were much too long. So there.
And I really, really loved it that my personal hero Richard Dawkins did not write just some plain old foreword, but introduced each and every author and excerpt, with background knowledge and sometimes amusing, sometimes thought-provoking anecdotes. One peeve, though, and not an unexpected one: these far too long, and far too annoyingly unfunny excerpts from the writings of Peter Medawar. (At some time in the future, I must give it a try and write to Richard Dawkins in the hope of being able to disabuse him of at least some of his grim notions about postmodernism.) But shortly after the Medawar Annoyance, everything was made up for by an equally long, carefully chosen, and wonderful essay by Stephen J. Gould.
