Flights of Fancy: Defying Gravity by Design and Evolution
Ratings1
Average rating3
Have you ever dreamt you could fly? Or imagined what it would be like to glide and swoop through the sky like a bird? Do you let your mind soar to unknown, magical spaces? In Flights of Fancy, Richard Dawkins explains how nature and humans have learned to overcome the pull of gravity and take to the skies. From the mythical Icarus, to the sadly extinct but spectacular bird Argentavis magnificens, from the Wright flyer and the 747, to the Tinkerbella fairyfly and the Peregrine falcon. But it is also about flights of the mind, about escaping the everyday - through science, ideas and imagination. Fascinating and beautifully illustrated, this is a unique collaboration between one of the world's leading scientists and a talented artist.
Tags
Genre
Reviews
Popular Reviews
Reviews with the most likes.
Not sure who this book is aimed at - kids or adults. Author intrudes too much in the text.
Richard Dawkins is a great writer. In this book, he continues to excel at engaging the reader. However, there is no deep dive into any fact. Just several anecdotes after anecdotes. Many of the topics presented here have already been covered in other books. It seems like the book wasn't thoroughly crafted, just a bunch of information thrown into chapters to maintain coherence, trying to touch on various topics without ever truly developing them. At times during the reading, when I expected more depth on a subject, a new topic was introduced or the chapter ended abruptly. Perhaps my experience wasn't great, as other Dawkins books are excellent – like The God Delusion, The Greatest Show on Earth, and River Out of Eden. Any chapter from The Ancestor's Tale is better than this entire book as a whole. In short, I don't recommend reading it.
PS: The images are wonderful.
