Climbing Mount Improbable

It is grindingly, creakingly, crashingly obvious that, if Darwinism were really a theory of chance, it couldn't work. Far from being a difficulty peculiar to Darwinism, the astronomic improbability of eyes and knees, enzymes and all living wonders is precisely the problem that any theory of life has to solve, and that Darwinism uniquely does solve. It solves it by breaking the improbability up into small, manageable parts, smearing out the luck needed, going round the back of Mount Improbable and crawling up the gentle slopes, inch by million-year inch.

Contents
1. Facing Mount Rushmore
2. Silken Fetters
3. The Message From the Mountain
4. Getting Off the Ground
6. The Museum of All Shells
7. Kaleidoscopic Embryos
8. Pollen Grains and Magic Bullets
9. The Robot Repeater
10. A Garden Inclosed

Mount Improbable . . . is Dawkins's metaphor for natural selection: its peaks standing for evolution's mos complex achievements . . . exhilarating – a perfect riposte to a great deal of fuzzy thinking. Robin McKie, Observer.

One of the most gifted storytellers of our generation . . . He is to Darwinism what St Paul is to Cnhristianity. Mike Maran, Scotland on Sunday.

Dawkins has done more than anyone else now writing to make evolutionary biology cmprehensible and acceptable. John Maynard Smith, Sunday Times.

A beautiful, barnstorming thunderclap of a book. Mail on Sunday.

Like David Attenborough he ranges widely, radiates enthusiasm, and all the while steadily builds up a cumulative case . . . enternaining and persuasive. Don Cupitt, Evening Standard.

Dawkins is a genius of science popularization. If you have not read one of his books before, Climbing Mount Improbable is a wonderful place to begin: it is non-stop mental and literary pleasure. Mark Ridley, The Times.

How pleased old Darwin would have been. Michael Taylor, Scotsman.