Richard Dawkins's Reading List
The author of “The God Delusion” and “An Appetite for Wonder” doesn’t care for “Pride and Prejudice”: “I can’t get excited about who is going to marry whom, and how rich they are.”
Open in WellRead Daily app →By the Book: Richard Dawkins (2013)
NYT By the Book column (2013-09-12).
Source: www.nytimes.com
Daniel C. Dennett · Buy on Amazon
"But the best new book I have read is Daniel Dennett’s “Intuition Pumps and Other Tools for Thinking.” A philosopher of Dennett’s caliber has nothing to fear from clarity and openness. He is out to enlighten and explain."
J. Anderson Thomson · Buy on Amazon
"Less well known, but very good in their different ways, are J. Anderson Thomson’s “Why We Believe in God(s),” a psychologically informed analysis of what J. L. Mackie called “The Miracle of Theism,”"
Sean Faircloth · Buy on Amazon
"Sean Faircloth’s “Attack of the Theocrats!,” a chillingly well-researched unmasking of the contemporary political threat to America’s noble secular tradition."
Elspeth Huxley · Buy on Amazon
"The greatest novel to come out of Kenya is, in my admittedly limited opinion, one of the great novels of the English language, and it is lamentably neglected by literary connoisseurs: Elspeth Huxley’s “Red Strangers,” a saga sweeping through four generations of a Kikuyu family."
Geraldine Elliot · Buy on Amazon
"Geraldine Elliot listened to the folk tales of the Ngoni people further south (where I lived after my family moved from Kenya), and she produced a beautiful series of children’s books which I adored. “The Long Grass Whispers,” “Where the Leopard Passes” and others are fables of animal wiles and trickery."
Geraldine Elliot · Buy on Amazon
"“The Long Grass Whispers,” “Where the Leopard Passes” and others are fables of animal wiles and trickery, a kind of African Brer Rabbit and Brer Fox."
Hugh Lofting · Buy on Amazon
"I didn’t know children were expected to have literary heroes, but I certainly had one, and I even identified with him at one time: Doctor Dolittle, whom I now half identify with the Charles Darwin of Beagle days. This gentle, kindly naturalist, who could talk to nonhuman animals…"
Charles Darwin · 1859 · Buy on Amazon
"The obvious, and true, answer is Darwin’s “Origin,” but I didn’t read the book itself until after its message had changed my life by secondary routes."
Charles Darwin · 1859 · Buy on Amazon
"The obvious, and true, answer is Darwin’s “Origin,” but I didn’t read the book itself until after its message had changed my life by secondary routes."
Fred Hoyle · Buy on Amazon
"So I’ll go, less obviously, for a work of science fiction, Fred Hoyle’s “Black Cloud.” … I nevertheless learned more science from it, at a formative age, than one ever expects from a work of fiction."
Peter Medawar · Buy on Amazon
"Both Peter Medawar and James Watson have written books on this. Called, respectively, “Advice to a Young Scientist” and “Avoid Boring People,” these are not their authors’ best books, but they offer memorable hints for success in the vocation of science."
James Watson · Buy on Amazon
"Both Peter Medawar and James Watson have written books on this. Called, respectively, “Advice to a Young Scientist” and “Avoid Boring People,” … Watson, in particular, has a list of quirky imperatives."
Daniel F. Galouye · Buy on Amazon
"Another first-class example of the right sort of science fiction is Daniel F. Galouye’s “Dark Universe.” Here the intuition being pumped concerns mythology and the origins of religion."
Unknown · Buy on Amazon
"Depending on how naïvely literalistic you are, you might be surprised to find the Bible. The King James Version, of course, and not so much on my shelves as continually off my shelves, because I open it so often: sometimes to quote it, sometimes for sheer literary pleasure — especially Ecclesiastes and the Song of Songs."
Carl Sagan · Buy on Amazon
"Carl Sagan’s “Demon-Haunted World” is the best antidote I know to superstition and pseudoscience."
Robert Axelrod · Buy on Amazon
"Robert Axelrod’s “Evolution of Cooperation” is salutary for anybody involved in settling disputes and trying to foster cooperation. Indeed I wrote in my foreword to the revised edition: “The world’s leaders should all be locked up with this book and not released until they have read it.”"
Favorite books (2019)
Favorite books recommended by Richard Dawkins, as compiled by radicalreads.com. Source article: https://radicalreads.com/richard-dawkins-favorite-books/.
Source: radicalreads.com
Elspeth Huxley · Buy on Amazon
"This epic saga sweeping through four generations of life among Kenya’s Kikuyu tribe is a novel of Steinbeckian stature neglected by literary connoisseurs. Huxley leads us into the Kikuyu world so that, when the British arrive, they seem as alien as invading Martians. Her descriptive powers rival Steinbeck’s, but her imagery is drawn from the Kikuyu mind. A felled tree ‘tottered like a drunken elder.'"
Daniel F. Galouye · Buy on Amazon
"The people of this sci-fi novel live underground in darkness. They retain ‘light’ in their language, but only in allusions to a lost paradise. They worship Light (‘For Light’s sake!’), and their theology includes demonic figures that engineered the fall from Light’s grace. The demons are called Strontium, Cobalt, and the arch-devil, ‘Hydrogen Himself.’ Go figure, as you Americans say."
Evelyn Waugh · Buy on Amazon
"How could so profoundly sensitive a writer of beautiful English have been such an apparently shallow, even unpleasant, man? Whatever the answer, I re-read Waugh’s books again and again, mesmerized by the chiseled craftsmanship of every sentence. I could have chosen any of his books, but the Sword of Honor trilogy, an affectionately comic portrayal of the bungling chaos of military life, is perhaps my favorite."
P.G. Wodehouse · Buy on Amazon
"P.G. Wodehouse is my escape from the sleep-disturbing troubles of life. I know all too exactly what Evelyn Waugh meant when he said, ‘Wodehouse’s idyllic world can never stale. He will continue to release future generations from captivity that may be more irksome than our own.’ I love Jeeves and Bertie, but Uncle Fred teamed up with Lord Emsworth provides perhaps the purest release of all."
Peter Medawar · Buy on Amazon
"A winner of the Nobel Prize for medicine, Peter Medawar is also the foremost scientific essayist of the 20th century, with the sort of wit that makes you want to seize his book and rush out into the street to show somebody — anybody."