Narrow Roads of Gene Land, Volume 2: Evolution of Sex

Rating:
Summary: A brilliant sequel...
Review: ...marred only by the untimely death of the author. Volume Two focuses on the second half of the extraordinary career of the MOST extraordinary W.D. Hamilton. The papers presented here are almost without exception key components of much of what many of us regard as an appropriate evolutionary approach to the origins of sex, kinship, disease response etc. and the book would be worth having just to get all of these in a convenient bound form instead of the dog-eared xeroxes that doubtless clog up many of your files. Beyond that however we also get more of hamilton's delightful insights into just how he came up with an idea, who he was talking to, where he was while he was working on a concept, what he thought of a piece of work years later, etc. etc, -in other words all the "gossip" that when you know it makes science a real human endeavor, and when it is left out tends to leave many of us cold. Above all else one gets the sense that here was someone who was without question a genius, but was also a lovely person as well -someone with a sense of humor and a sense of his own mortality, who at the same time could revel in the sheer beauty of an idea, or the notion of life as a cosmic joke that must nonetheless be taken seriously. Anyone who is interested in the DOING of science as well as the content would be well advised to browse through this book. The intro by Dawkins is frankly skippable, but the rest? Sheer joy!