Essential Books All Evolution Pupil Must Own

[aquablue]

Which books are essential to have in your personal evolution library- from newbie to elder disciple; not just Dawkins literature either.

[stijndeloose]

Jerry Coyne's "Why Evolution Is True"
Prothero's "Evolution - What The Fossils Say And Why It Matters"
Dawkins's "The Greatest Show On Earth"
Darwin's "The Origin Of Species"

and more...

[aquablue]

stijndeloose: (and more...) which are those.

[stijndeloose]

stijndeloose: (and more...) which are those.

A whole bunch I haven't read yet!

I should read "Climbing Mount Improbable". I should read something by Gould as well. (Does anyone have any recommendations?)

But I have a whole bunch of books waiting on my shelf that are not dealing with evolution as well, including "Six Easy Pieces" and "Six Not-So-Easy Pieces" by Feinman, "The Christ Conspiracy" by Acharya, "The Dragons Of Eden" by Sagan (in Russian), "The Universe In A Nutshell" by Hawking (also in Russian) and "The Incredible Shrinking Son Of Man" by Price (actually reading that right now).

I've also got a Russian book called "Evolution form A to Я" (я being the last number of the Russian alphabet) that looks promising.

So much to read...

[Feivel]

Euginie Scott's book Evolution Vs. Creationism.

[Feivel]

I should read something by Gould as well. (Does anyone have any recommendations?)

Evolution Of Life On Earth from Gould is good.

[stijndeloose]

I should read something by Gould as well. (Does anyone have any recommendations?)

Evolution Of Life On Earth from Gould is good.

Thanks for the tip, Fievel!

[susu.exp]

Which books are essential to have in your personal evolution library- from newbie to elder disciple; not just Dawkins literature either.

Well, there are some good all round textbooks - my recomendation is "Evolution", by Barton et al. (2008) Though this view may change once I get around to reading the revised Futuyma (2009).
A must have (IMHO) is Wägele "Foundations of phylogenetic systematics". A very concise primer, that´ll make you grasp the basics and allow you to understand phylogenetics papers. At least to a good degree.
From Dawkins I recomend "The selfish gene" and "The extended phenotype". To a lesser degree "Climbing mount improbable". CMI has got good stuff in it, but it gets beaten by McGhees "Theoretical Morphology: The concept and its applications".
From Gould, "Full House" is rather good (even if it has baseball in it). "Phylogeny and Ontology" is quite good, if somewhat drawn out occassionally and with the progress evo-devo has made quite dated, but still a nice intro. "The structure of evolutionary biology" has great parts, but you need to have a very solid understanding of evolution to start with (and it could´ve done with better editing and even more so a better index).
I like Nowaks "Evolutionary dynamics" as a primer in mathematical models. Rather solid if you can bear a few formulas.
The next thing in line there would be either Hamiltons "Population genetics" or Hartls "Principles of Population genetics". I haven´t had the money to get either, but they are on my "to do" list...
I can recommend all of David Raups books. "The nemesis affair" is more than half autobiography of a debate (it had a great impact on me as a kid - certainly influenced my choice of a career), "Extinction: bad Genes or Bad luck?" is thought provoking at the very least and "Principles of paleontology" with Stanley was one of the seminal books of the discipline. The book that turned students towards a new science of paleontology. The revised 3rd Edition (a complete rewrite basically) by Foote and Miller is doing the same right now.
Eldredges "Macroevolution: Pattern and Process" is nice, if you can track down a copy.

Specific organismal groups:
Grimaldi and Engel "The evolution of insects" - pretty great.
Taylor et al. "Paleobotany" 2nd Ed. - just out and I have only looked through it once. But it seems rather nice (and has a chapter on herbivory).

Finally "The Unified Neutral Theory of Biodiversity and Biogeography" by Hubbell. Very en vouge and right now the book to read, full of new ideas in an old field, especially on methodology. I´m hearing rave reviews and it changes research programs. So: nice to have.

[aquablue]

I need to append another question: For the beginner starting his/her very first Evolution library, what book should be (must be) purchased first and why?

Thanks again. Great replies BTW.

[Teuton]

This one:

* Ruse, Michael, and Joseph Travis, eds. Evolution: The First Four Billion Years. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2009.

"Spanning evolutionary science from its inception to its latest findings, from discoveries and data to philosophy and history, this book is the most complete, authoritative, and inviting one-volume introduction to evolutionary biology available."

Take a look: GoogleBooks

[Teuton]

I need to append another question: For the beginner starting his/her very first Evolution library, what book should be (must be) purchased first and why?

I recommend:

* Mayr, Ernst. What Evolution Is. New York: Basic Books, 2002.

"At once a spirited defense of Darwinian explanations of biology and an elegant primer on evolution for the general reader."

Why? Because "[Ernst Mayr is] a writer of extraordinary insight and clarity" (Stephen Jay Gould).

[Darwinsbulldog]

Freeman & Herron (2007) "Evolutionary Analysis".
Ridley, Mark (1993) "Evolution".
Dawkins, Richard (1996)"Climbing Mount Improbable"
" (1995)" River Out Of Eden"
" (1982) "The Extended Phenotype"
Gould, S.J. (1977) "Ontogeny and Phylogeny"
Dennett, DC (1995) "Darwin's Dangerous Idea"
Darwin, CR (1859) "The Origin of Species"
Shubin, N (2009) "Your Inner Fish"

Obviously, the are many more fine books out there on Evolution. The first two are university texts that are more understandable with some genetics background, but there is sufficient genetics coverage in them to read without having studied genetics.

Movin' ta books...........

[matt_shute-07]

Dawkins, Richard (1996)"Climbing Mount Improbable"

As an introduction, I think I'd slightly favour The Blind Watchmaker by Dawkins. With his characteristically lucid prose he explains how natural selection produces all the stunning complexity of living things, and throughout he contrasts the fact of evolution with the non-theory of "Design". A good companion-piece would be Dawkins's latest book, The Greatest Show on Earth. While the former book is a crash-course on how evolution by natural selection works, the latter offers a good overview of the evidence.

Of course, nobody interested in the subject should be without a copy of the classic On the Origin of Species by Charles Darwin.

[Tero1111]

Mayr, Ernst

Yeah, good unemotional language. No consideration for fundies. They will not read it.

[Darwinsbulldog]

Dawkins, Richard (1996)"Climbing Mount Improbable"

As an introduction, I think I'd slightly favour The Blind Watchmaker by Dawkins. With his characteristically lucid prose he explains how natural selection produces all the stunning complexity of living things, and throughout he contrasts the fact of evolution with the non-theory of "Design". A good companion-piece would be Dawkins's latest book, The Greatest Show on Earth. While the former book is a crash-course on how evolution by natural selection works, the latter offers a good overview of the evidence.

Of course, nobody interested in the subject should be without a copy of the classic On the Origin of Species by Charles Darwin.

As well as new material, CMI contains a lot of the material in TBW, and I think is a better "sell" of the evolution idea by demonstrating the metaphor of the gentle slope of the mountain seen by the evolutionist, whereas the creationist only sees the cliff face. Richard has always been a writer of excellent quality, but CMI is a more "mature" style than TBW. I am not saying Richard was immature, I am more using the analogy of a good wine or fine brandy. An already excellent bottle of wine improves with age.

[matt_shute-07]

Let's agree that they're both excellent books. I must concede that the analogy of the mountain with a sheer vertical surface at one end, and a gentle slope around the back, gradually leading to the summit, is very good.

[Darwinsbulldog]

Let's agree that they're both excellent books. I must concede that the analogy of the mountain with a sheer vertical surface at one end, and a gentle slope around the back, gradually leading to the summit, is very good.

No, no, no, I am in an argumentative mood today! Its war, I say, war!

[aquablue]

I'll setting things. This is the very best book ever writing on the subject:

[susu.exp]

A good companion-piece would be Dawkins's latest book, The Greatest Show on Earth. While the former book is a crash-course on how evolution by natural selection works, the latter offers a good overview of the evidence.

No, it doesn´t. Reasons to be found elsewhere (see the RD section of the forum). If you refrain from reading chapters 2 and 10, you will at least not get stuck with really bad wrong impressions (less of them in chapter 10 than in chapter 2), but a book that is filled with tangential stuff and fails at laying out the evidence. What is the best evidence for universal common descent? The universal homologies. Of the 13 listed, the book makes mention of a maximum of 3 (that is if you count the notion that "the DNA code is invariant across all living creatures" on page 315 as genetic material, genetic code and bases used in DNA.). That single textbox (from the Barton et al. textbook noted above - they put all their figures and tables online as well as 2 additional chapters - highly reccomended) has more than 4 times the evidence for common descent as TGSOE. So... I´m rather unimpressed.

I need to append another question: For the beginner starting his/her very first Evolution library, what book should be (must be) purchased first and why?

For that, I´d also go with Mayr.

[mizvekov]

No, it doesn´t. Reasons to be found elsewhere (see the RD section of the forum). If you refrain from reading chapters 2 and 10, you will at least not get stuck with really bad wrong impressions (less of them in chapter 10 than in chapter 2), but a book that is filled with tangential stuff and fails at laying out the evidence. What is the best evidence for universal common descent? The universal homologies. Of the 13 listed, the book makes mention of a maximum of 3 (that is if you count the notion that "the DNA code is invariant across all living creatures" on page 315 as genetic material, genetic code and bases used in DNA.). That single textbox (from the Barton et al. textbook noted above - they put all their figures and tables online as well as 2 additional chapters - highly reccomended) has more than 4 times the evidence for common descent as TGSOE. So... I´m rather unimpressed.

The book is aimed at creationists, so Richard omits those evidences which they most easily dismiss. (ie homologies is 'reuse of ideas' or 'style of the creator' etc, ofcourse he could have turned the argument around instead)

[susu.exp]

The book is aimed at creationists, so Richard omits those evidences which they most easily dismiss. (ie homologies is 'reuse of ideas' or 'style of the creator' etc, ofcourse he could have turned the argument around instead)

But he discusses homologies at lenght (3 chapters on morphological homologies, developmental homologies and molecular homologies repsectively). They are discussed to support clades. Which is what they do - no problem there. But universal common descent - all life going back to one common ancestor, i.e. life being a single clade is not discussed in this way. And that´s weird, considering that it´s probably the single thing about evolution creationists dislike the most.

I don´t think the UHs are easy to dismiss. The genetic code is suboptimal - a frozen accident. Why design everything with not just a flaw, but the same flaw? The same goes for the amino acids. I´ve got more than 400 parts to build things from. Why restrict myself to 20, even though there are often other parts that would work better. In fact, some organisms have proteins that "retrofit" other proteins with other amino acids.

[mizvekov]

The book is aimed at creationists, so Richard omits those evidences which they most easily dismiss. (ie homologies is 'reuse of ideas' or 'style of the creator' etc, ofcourse he could have turned the argument around instead)

But he discusses homologies at lenght (3 chapters on morphological homologies, developmental homologies and molecular homologies repsectively). They are discussed to support clades. Which is what they do - no problem there. But universal common descent - all life going back to one common ancestor, i.e. life being a single clade is not discussed in this way. And that´s weird, considering that it´s probably the single thing about evolution creationists dislike the most.

Yeah true, it's more like it was just a fluke on his part then. He also only very briefly mentioned the studies on abiogenesis (but not much problem there, it's not his area obviously). The UHs could easily have been mentioned there though.
(But I hated the jeering attacks on creationists though, it makes the book look unprofessional)

I don´t think the UHs are easy to dismiss. The genetic code is suboptimal - a frozen accident. Why design everything with not just a flaw, but the same flaw? The same goes for the amino acids. I´ve got more than 400 parts to build things from. Why restrict myself to 20, even though there are often other parts that would work better. In fact, some organisms have proteins that "retrofit" other proteins with other amino acids.

I agree it's obviously the strongest argument for UCD. But I have never had any success with it discussing with creationists. (Ie never made them shut up, they always come back with the evidence of style of design kind of argument)
But I always have success with molecular evidence. The vitamin C single base deletion makes them run away like crying babies, but Richard did not mention it either.
So conclusion, even if the intended audience was creationists, he missed several good opportunities.

Edit: By the way, I know vitamin C is not a protein obviously. I was referring to the gene that codes for one of the enzymes involved in it's production.

[j.mills]

Psst! Could you give us a paragraph on this vitamin C thing please?

[mizvekov]

Psst! Could you give us a paragraph on this vitamin C thing please?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vitamin_C# ... _evolution
http://www.seanet.com/~alexs/ascorbate/ ... -3-p82.htm

[Darwinsbulldog]

Iv'e just looked in the indexes of ALL Richard's books [but not the monographs and other papers] and there is NO Vitamin "C". Vitamins of all shapes and sizes, but no C. How odd.

Forest-dwellers [over evolutionary time] would tend to lose their ability to anabolise Vit C, as there is no selection pressure to keep the genes to make something that you can pick off a tree. So its no surprise that humans, fruit bats and other primates have to consume Vitamin C.