As the book's subtitle says, this covers ten significant evolutionary inventions, including movement, sex, consciousness, death and so on. Each is covered in some detail (although necessarily abridged and summarised) from a genetic/molecular biology perspective, but also from a more thoughtful esoteric standpoint.
Despite having read a number of similar books, including all of Dawkins' work and Steve Jones' Almost Like a Bear, I still found this hard going in places (quite a few places actually!) and, from that point of view, readers uninitiated in the world of evolutionary biology should approach it with a little caution. Nevertheless it is still a very well written, concise, readable book and the author's passion and humour show through. If you're willing to be flummoxed in places on the first pass (never anything to be ashamed of, I believe), it's quite suitable for the lay reader.
I still think that The Blind Watchmaker and The Selfish Gene tower above all other entries in the popular evolutionary biology genre and these are, I suspect, useful reading before you pick this one up. However the strong point of this book is that it brings the subject as bang up to date as any popular published work can and it is invaluable in that respect.
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