Author : Richard Dawkins
What is it about : The ideas that genes could act beyond the boundaries and vicinity of the organism in which they resided, were explored and illustrated with numerous examples from cuckoo and snails to bees and beavers. The effects and manifestations of one' organism's genes to influence and modify other organisms and the environments at a distance covered a range of activities including behavior, hormone excretion, re-structuring the environment such as dam building by beavers etc.
Some thoughts after having read the book : The author painstakingly set the scene in the first three-quarters of the book, in my opinion, to build the case for a water-tight argument and to avoid any misunderstandings from his peers and experts in the field. As such, the book took some tough reading, as the first three-quarters of the book had few direct relevance to Extended Phenotype and it was a drag to plough through pages after pages of fully-versed arguments about such topics as "Fitness", Group Selection and detailed Genetics. I would be far happier to read more about illustrations on examples of Extended Phenotype.
Would I recommend this book to you : Tough going and by no means a lay person's book to get acquainted with the interesting topics of Evolution. Unlike the author's many other books which were less technical, cumbersome and scholarly and written more for the general public, this book was really written for those in the field. I was just thankful that a lay reader such as myself had the opportunities to read his many other mega-interesting books before gaining a bit of a foundation to also cover this book.
