| Russell S. Pfau | Department of Biological Sciences |
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The following suggestions represent a small sampling of books that, at least in my opinion, are a must-read for everyone with an interest in biology. Follow the links for a more detailed review of each book. You will find almost all of these books in the Dick Smith Library, and to make things easy, the call numbers for each book are provided at the bottom of this page. Just hit print and head over to the library!
-Russell Being that evolution is the process that underlies all things biology, this is a topic that everyone (especially biology majors!) should thoroughly understand. I recommend three books to start with. Even though it was written over 150 years ago, Charles Darwin's On the Origin of Species is actually fairly readable--but understand the time when it was written (long sentences were in vogue!). If anything, at least read the last chapter--it's a fairly concise summary of the entire book. There's even an on-line version that includes an illustrated guide to Darwin's classic text. For something a little more modern, Darwin's Ghost: The Origin of Species Updated is an excellent attempt to update Darwin's classic. Steve Jones takes the reader for a fascinating journey through the discoveries of modern biologists--these are things Darwin would certainly have included in his book, if he had only known about them. Finally, the companion volume to PBS's television series Evolution, Evolution: The Triumph of an Idea by Carl Zimmer, provides a thorough, and very readable, account of Darwin's ideas and how the modern theory of evolution is able to explain so much in biology. While Darwin's book On the Origin of Species wasn't meant to focus on the process of speciation, Menno Schilthuizen's book does, and with a readability that is rarely surpassed. Frogs, Flies, and Dandelions gives an absolutely fascinating account of the many ways that species form. And not only that, it presents science the way it works in real life, as a series of contributions by individuals that love what they do (and who sometimes hold their ideas dear to their heart). I read this little book in three days; because it's short for one, but also because I just couldn't put it down! Any biologist (make that any human) worth their content in salt should find the origin of modern human populations fascinating. Two recent books explore what is currently known, based in large part on the findings of modern genetics: Bryan Sykes' The Seven Daughters of Eve: The Science That Reveals Our Genetic Ancestry and Steve Olson's Mapping Human History: Discovering the Past through our Genes. If you want to know who your ancestors really are and how modern genetics has revealed so much about this controversial topic, these two books are a must-read.
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