Hi All: Thank you all for your suggestions with regard to good texts for a non-majors evolution course. The responses that I got (25 in total) confirmed my notion that there is no community consensus with regard to this subject! From the 25 responses I got more than 25 different suggestions and only a handful of suggestions were offered more than once. Below I have compiled the list of recommendations. If the book was recommended more than one time, the number of times it was recommended is listed parenthetically after the title. The book that received the greatest number of votes (and one that I had already decided to include in the course!) is Weiner's Beak of the Finch. Beyond that, it looks like I have some reading to do this summer!
best, Jen Dawkins: The Selfish gene (recommended 3 times but also with two strong responses about specifically not using it!) Wilson: Diversity of Life (recommended 2 times but also with a strong response about not using it) Dawkins: The Ancestor's Tale Weiner: Beak of the Finch (4 recommendations) Palumbi: Evolution Explosion (2 recommendations) Shubin: Your Inner Fish Largent: Sourcebook on History of Evolution Dawkins: Blind Watchmaker Zimmer: The Tangled Bank (3 recommendations) Coyne: Why Evolution is True (3 recommendations) Jalonka and Lamb: Evolution in four dimensions "Evolution for Dummies" Gould: Hen's teeth and Horse's toes Mayr: What evolution is (2 recommendations) Futuyma: Evolution second edition Pigliucci:Denying evolution: Creationism, scientism, and the nature of science Quammen: The reluctant Mr. Darwin Kirchner and Gerhant: The plausibility of life Dawkins: the Greatest show on earth (2 recommendations, one anti-recommendation) Carrol: Making of the fittest Resnik: The Origin, then and now Darwin: Origin of species Cyril Andrews: biography of darwin Jim Costa: The annotated origin Stanley: earth systems history Dawkins: Ancestor's tale Fortey: Life Rodger: Breaking Through Stein: The evolution book (children's book)
