Who recommended The Selfish Gene?

28 people have recommended The Selfish Gene in the interviews, articles and reading lists we track, including Paul Graham, Jordan Peterson, Ev Williams and Elon Musk. Each name links to their full reading list.

Is The Selfish Gene worth reading?

28 people we track recommend it. It is best for: a second-year biology undergrad stuck on why worker bees sacrifice themselves, trying to reconcile natural selection with altruism, and looking for a theoretical anchor before their final term paper on social insects; a product manager at a social media startup puzzling over why some features spread like wildfire, who needs a framework for cultural transmission that goes beyond simple marketing metrics and explains the mechanics of idea replication; a high school biology teacher preparing a unit on evolution, struggling to convey the logic of inclusive fitness to teenagers, and wanting the book's vivid analogies to make gene-level thinking click for a skeptical classroom. It may not suit: you'll likely put it down when the gene-level explanations become repetitive and you feel like Dawkins is hammering the same deterministic point through every example; skip if you prefer evolutionary biology that foregrounds cooperation, group dynamics, or ecosystem interconnectivity; this book treats those as illusions produced by selfish genes; not for you if Dawkins's rhetorical intensity and occasional dismissiveness make you dig in your heels rather than reconsider — the ideological tone might bounce you off.

What books are like The Selfish Gene?

Readers of The Selfish Gene also turn to A Crack in Creation, The Blind Watchmaker and The Code Breaker, based on the lists and recommenders these books share.

The Selfish Gene: Recommended by 28 People

Name: The Selfish Gene
Author: Richard Dawkins
ISBN: 9780198788607

As influential today as when it was first published, The Selfish Gene has become a classic exposition of evolutionary thought. Professor Dawkins articulates a gene's eye view of evolution - a view giving centre stage to these persistent units of information, and in which organisms can be seen as vehicles for their replication. This imaginative, powerful, and stylistically brilliant work not only brought the insights of Neo-Darwinism to a wide audience, but galvanized the biology community, generating much debate and stimulating whole new areas of research. Forty years later, its insights remain as relevant today as on the day it was published. This 40th anniversary edition includes a new…