An Appetite for Wonder: The Making of a Scientist
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Born to parents who were enthusiastic naturalists, and linked through his wider family to a clutch of accomplished scientists, Richard Dawkins was bound to have biology in his genes. But what were the influences that shaped his life? And who inspired him to become the pioneering scientist and public thinker now famous (and infamous to some) around the world? In An Appetite for Wonder we join him on a personal journey from an enchanting childhood in colonial Africa, through the eccentricities of boarding school in England, to his studies at the University of Oxford’s dynamic Zoology Department, which sparked his radical new vision of Darwinism, The Selfish Gene. Through Dawkins’s honest self-reflection, touching reminiscences and witty anecdotes, we are finally able to understand the private influences that shaped the public man who, more than anyone else in his generation, explained our own origins.
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2 primary booksRichard Dawkins' Memoirs
Richard Dawkins' Memoirs is a 2-book series with 2 primary works first released in 2013 with contributions by Richard Dawkins.
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You know how sometimes you sit down with a grandparent or elderly relative and you think they're going to tell you an awesome war story or about something crazy that happened when they were younger, but instead they just bore you with the minutiae of what they ate at school as a child? That's pretty much how this book is. The first 220 pages are wordy and and boring. It's only toward the end of the book, when Dawkins starts to discuss his research and writing, that things get intriguing. I liked the last three or four chapters. I felt like I learned a lot from him at that point. But reading anecdotes about classmates from school when he was a child? Not so much.
Being an amazing writer on religion led me to reading everything Dawkins has written. This biography details his life and inspiration that drove him towards a life in science. Interesting subject, but reading about years in boarding school and all about academia wasn't that interesting to me. His background in coding was the most interesting part, but covered quickly.
Being an amazing writer on religion led me to reading everything Dawkins has written. This biography details his life and inspiration that drove him towards a life in science. Interesting subject, but reading about years in boarding school and all about academia wasn't that interesting to me. His background in coding was the most interesting part, but covered quickly.
