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OT: best book in years

John J. Lee jjl at pobox.com
Sun Sep 7 18:14:08 EDT 2003 
Philip Austin <paustin at eos.ubc.ca> writes:

> Alex Martelli <aleax at aleax.it> writes:
> > Gould is a great writer, even though in his later works he often gives in to
> > unstructured rambling (I can of course well sympathize with THAT 
> > temptation:-) -- Dawkins, IMHO, isn't, even though in "The selfish gene" he

Seems we have different metrics... I don't read science books (even
popular ones) for pretty prose ;-)  As a result, I regard Dawkins'
writing as the more elegant, useful, and fun of the two, thanks to its
extreme clarity.

[...]
> > presented by a truly great writer, try Matt Ridley -- "Genome", "Origins of
> > Virtue", "Red Queen", all superb writing (haven't read "Nature via Nurture"
> > yet -- I'll wait for the paperback).  Not to be confused with *Mark* Ridley,
> > who also writes (quite worthwhile books and antologies) in exactly the
> > same field, mind you.
> 
> 
> See Allen Orr's New York Review of Books article for a cogent
> critique of Ridley's "Nature via Nurture":
> 
> http://www.nybooks.com/articles/16522

Can't resist mentioning (even though I haven't read it yet) "The Blank
Slate" by Steven Pinker.  Pinker's writing is Dawkins + jokes :-)


John
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