I recently purchased Richard Dawkins' new book, The Greatest Show on Earth: The Evidence for Evolution. While I have not finished the book yet, I have looked it over from cover to cover and am sufficiently far enough along in consuming it to say that it is a wonderful read and perhaps his best yet. Dawkins states in the beginning, that the book is not about religion. It is about presenting "the evidence for evolution." This is made clear by the first two sentences of the preface: "The evidence for evolution grows by the day, and has never been stronger. At the same time, paradoxically, ill-informed opposition is also stronger than I can remember. This book is my personal summary of the evidence that the 'theory' of evolution is actually a fact--as incontrovertible a fact as any in science." He admits that while he has written other books about evolution like The Selfish Gene, these other books didn't discuss much about the evidence.

This book is one that will be very useful for those of us who sometimes struggle while attempting arguing against the creationist notion that evolution is "only a theory." Indeed, he deals with this notion right at the beginning, as chapter one is titled, "Only a Theory?" This section deals with the definitions of theory and hypothesis against the backdrop of what can be considered a fact.

Another pleasant aspect of this book is that there are four sections spaced throughout the book with several pages of glossy photos relating to what is being discussed. I was also happy to notice that at the beginning of the final chapter he includes one of my favorite passages from The Origin of Species.

"Thus, from the war of nature, from famine and death, the most exalted object which we are capable of conceiving, namely, the production of the higher animals, directly follows. There is grandeur in this view of life, with its several powers, having been originally breathed into a few forms or into one; and that, whilst this planet has gone cycling on according to the fixed law of gravity, from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been and are being, evolved."

--Robert Lane