gregl

I need help picking a basic book on evolution. I didn’t study biology in college. But I’ve done a certain amount of reading over the years since I got interested in evolution vs. creationism (Tower of Babel, Finding Darwin’s God, The Beak of the Finch, The Age of the Earth by Dalrymple, In Search of Deep Time by Gee, some collections of Stephen Jay Gould). I’ve been thinking I’d like to read a thorough overview of the field of evolution to fill in holes in my knowledge.

From the description of Douglas Futuyma’s Evolutionary Biology, 3rd Edition (1997, 763 pages) in the E/C Booklist in this forum, it sounds like exactly what I’m looking for. But then on Amazon I see that he’s put out a newer book titled simply Evolution (2005, 543 pages). From the descriptions in Amazon, they both sound like good basic books on the subject. They’re expensive so I only want to buy one. Can anyone here help me understand the difference between the two books?