KC

"Genetics and the Origin of Species", by Theodosius Dobzhansky. My personal favorite. The original 1937 edition was reissued with an introduction by Steve Gould. Never mind the age. Most of it holds up remarkably well, and it is beautifully written. If you can find the 3rd edition (1951), even better.

Cheers,

KC

southernhybrid

If you'd like to add a book from the popular science genre, that is filled with insights and speculation as well as basic facts about evolution, I suggest, Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors by Carl Sagan, and Ann Druyan. Those, like myself who are not scientists but have an interest in the topic will enjoy this masterpiece.

Thanks DrGH for those links. I was able to defer doing my housework all morning thanks to you.

Lizard

Thank you, everybody, for your recommendations. I'm going to compile them into a list to hand out at events.

Anybody have books or Net sources to recommend for children?

If you think of any more, please let me know.

BTW, is Mayr's "What Is Evolution?" (I think that's the title) accessible to a general adult audience?

hezekiah jones

What Evolution Is. I'm reading that now, and it's excellent. Even I understand it!

RufusAtticus

In my grad program we got Wyatt Anderson, one of Dobzhansky's last students, to teach a class on the book. Yeh. We just finished up a seminar on R.A. Fisher and E.B. Ford.

~~RvFvS~~

Quetzal

Lizard: Mayr's book is outstanding, and very accessible to an intelligent adult (home-schooled fundy morons won't get past the introduction). Another one that is very readable (as long as we're talking books), is Zimmer's "Evolution" (and a bit more difficult but still very understandable is Zimmer's "At the Water's Edge" about whale evolution).

[edited to add: And for people who want to understand the incredible richness of life on this planet, E.O. Wilson's "Diversity of Life" is both readable and exceptionally well-illustrated.]

[ June 04, 2002: Message edited by: Morpho ]</p>

Coragyps

My kids had a copy of The Evolution Book by Sara Stein <a href="http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/089480927X/qid=1023299039/sr=1-8/ref=sr_1_8/103-2897316-5735852" target="_blank">(link)</a>. I remember it as being fairly good - I wasn't hanging around here learning all this stuff then, though.

KC

Outstanding. I tried to meet Dobzhansky when he was at UC Davis, and I was a student in the Bay Area, but he died before I made the trip out there.

Cheers,

KC