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Sign up todayBooks do Furnish a Life
This audiobook uses AI narration.
We’re taking steps to make sure AI narration is transparent.
Learn moreBrought to you by Penguin.
Including conversations with Neil DeGrasse Tyson, Steven Pinker, Matt Ridley and more, this is an essential guide to the most exciting ideas of our time and their proponents from our most brilliant science communicator. This audio edition also includes Richard Dawkins in conversation with Christopher Hitchens, in what was to be Christopher Hitchens' last interview before his death in 2011.
Books Do Furnish a Life is divided by theme, including celebrating nature, exploring humanity, and interrogating faith. For the first time, it brings together Richard Dawkins' forewords, afterwords and introductions to the work of some of the leading thinkers of our age - Carl Sagan, Lawrence Krauss, Jacob Bronowski, Lewis Wolpert - with a selection of his reviews to provide an electrifying celebration of science writing, both fiction and non-fiction. It is also a sparkling addition to Dawkins' own remarkable canon of work.
'Richard Dawkins is a thunderously gifted science writer.' Sunday Times
© Richard Dawkins 2021 (P) Penguin Audio 2021
Richard Dawkins (Author)
Richard Dawkins is author of The Selfish Gene, voted The Royal Society's Most Inspiring Science Book of All Time, and also the bestsellers The Blind Watchmaker, Climbing Mount Improbable, The Ancestor's Tale, The God Delusion, and two volumes of autobiography, An Appetite for Wonder and Brief Candle in the Dark. He is an emeritus fellow of New College, Oxford and a fellow of both the Royal Society and the Royal Society of Literature. In 2013, Dawkins was voted the world’s top thinker in Prospect magazine’s poll of 10,000 readers from over 100 countries.
Neil deGrasse Tyson (Reader)
Neil deGrasse Tyson was born in New York City the same week NASA was founded. After a BA in Physics from Harvard, a PhD in Astrophysics from Columbia, and a Postdoctoral research fellowship at Princeton, Tyson become the Frederick P. Rose Director of the Hayden Planetarium, where he has served since 1996. Neil is the host of the award-winning Cosmos TV series, and StarTalk, the first ever science-based talk show and podcast. He has over 13 million Twitter followers, among the top 200 people in the world.
Adam Hart-Davis (Reader)
Multitalented Adam Hart-Davis is a scientist, photographer, writer and broadcaster. He has presented programmes including What the Tudors Did for Us, What the Victorians Did for Us and Science Shack. Adam is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts and acts as a judge in many photographic competitions including Novartis.
Steven Pinker (Reader)
Steven Pinker is an experimental cognitive scientist. Currently Johnstone Professor of Psychology at Harvard, he has also taught at Stanford and MIT. He has won many prizes for his research, teaching, and his eleven books, including The Language Instinct, How the Mind Works, The Blank Slate, The Better Angels of Our Nature, and Enlightenment Now. He is a member of the National Academy of Sciences, a two-time Pulitzer Prize finalist, a Humanist of the Year, a recipient of nine honorary doctorates, one of Foreign Policy's 'World's Top 100 Public Intellectuals' and Time's '100 Most Influential People in the World Today'.
Christopher Hitchens (Reader)
Christopher Hitchens was an English-born American author, journalist and literary critic. He was a columnist at Vanity Fair, The Atlantic, World Affairs, The Nation, Slate, Free Inquiry, and a variety of other media in a career that spanned more than four decades and made him a prominent public intellectual, and a staple of talk shows and lecture circuits. His books include The Monarchy; Blood, Class, and Nostalgia; No One Left to Lie Toand God Is Not Great. He died in 2011.
Lawrence Krauss (Reader)
Lawrence M. Krauss is the Chairman of Physics at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, Ohio where he lives.
Richard Dawkins (Author)
Richard Dawkins is author of The Selfish Gene, voted The Royal Society's Most Inspiring Science Book of All Time, and also the bestsellers The Blind Watchmaker, Climbing Mount Improbable, The Ancestor's Tale, The God Delusion, and two volumes of autobiography, An Appetite for Wonder and Brief Candle in the Dark. He is an emeritus fellow of New College, Oxford and a fellow of both the Royal Society and the Royal Society of Literature. In 2013, Dawkins was voted the world’s top thinker in Prospect magazine’s poll of 10,000 readers from over 100 countries.
Neil deGrasse Tyson (Reader)
Neil deGrasse Tyson was born in New York City the same week NASA was founded. After a BA in Physics from Harvard, a PhD in Astrophysics from Columbia, and a Postdoctoral research fellowship at Princeton, Tyson become the Frederick P. Rose Director of the Hayden Planetarium, where he has served since 1996. Neil is the host of the award-winning Cosmos TV series, and StarTalk, the first ever science-based talk show and podcast. He has over 13 million Twitter followers, among the top 200 people in the world.
Adam Hart-Davis (Reader)
Multitalented Adam Hart-Davis is a scientist, photographer, writer and broadcaster. He has presented programmes including What the Tudors Did for Us, What the Victorians Did for Us and Science Shack. Adam is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts and acts as a judge in many photographic competitions including Novartis.
Steven Pinker (Reader)
Steven Pinker is an experimental cognitive scientist. Currently Johnstone Professor of Psychology at Harvard, he has also taught at Stanford and MIT. He has won many prizes for his research, teaching, and his eleven books, including The Language Instinct, How the Mind Works, The Blank Slate, The Better Angels of Our Nature, and Enlightenment Now. He is a member of the National Academy of Sciences, a two-time Pulitzer Prize finalist, a Humanist of the Year, a recipient of nine honorary doctorates, one of Foreign Policy's 'World's Top 100 Public Intellectuals' and Time's '100 Most Influential People in the World Today'.
Christopher Hitchens (Reader)
Christopher Hitchens was an English-born American author, journalist and literary critic. He was a columnist at Vanity Fair, The Atlantic, World Affairs, The Nation, Slate, Free Inquiry, and a variety of other media in a career that spanned more than four decades and made him a prominent public intellectual, and a staple of talk shows and lecture circuits. His books include The Monarchy; Blood, Class, and Nostalgia; No One Left to Lie Toand God Is Not Great. He died in 2011.
Lawrence Krauss (Reader)
Lawrence M. Krauss is the Chairman of Physics at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, Ohio where he lives.
Richard Dawkins (Author)
Richard Dawkins is author of The Selfish Gene, voted The Royal Society's Most Inspiring Science Book of All Time, and also the bestsellers The Blind Watchmaker, Climbing Mount Improbable, The Ancestor's Tale, The God Delusion, and two volumes of autobiography, An Appetite for Wonder and Brief Candle in the Dark. He is an emeritus fellow of New College, Oxford and a fellow of both the Royal Society and the Royal Society of Literature. In 2013, Dawkins was voted the world’s top thinker in Prospect magazine’s poll of 10,000 readers from over 100 countries.
Neil deGrasse Tyson (Reader)
Neil deGrasse Tyson was born in New York City the same week NASA was founded. After a BA in Physics from Harvard, a PhD in Astrophysics from Columbia, and a Postdoctoral research fellowship at Princeton, Tyson become the Frederick P. Rose Director of the Hayden Planetarium, where he has served since 1996. Neil is the host of the award-winning Cosmos TV series, and StarTalk, the first ever science-based talk show and podcast. He has over 13 million Twitter followers, among the top 200 people in the world.
Adam Hart-Davis (Reader)
Multitalented Adam Hart-Davis is a scientist, photographer, writer and broadcaster. He has presented programmes including What the Tudors Did for Us, What the Victorians Did for Us and Science Shack. Adam is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts and acts as a judge in many photographic competitions including Novartis.
Steven Pinker (Reader)
Steven Pinker is an experimental cognitive scientist. Currently Johnstone Professor of Psychology at Harvard, he has also taught at Stanford and MIT. He has won many prizes for his research, teaching, and his eleven books, including The Language Instinct, How the Mind Works, The Blank Slate, The Better Angels of Our Nature, and Enlightenment Now. He is a member of the National Academy of Sciences, a two-time Pulitzer Prize finalist, a Humanist of the Year, a recipient of nine honorary doctorates, one of Foreign Policy's 'World's Top 100 Public Intellectuals' and Time's '100 Most Influential People in the World Today'.
Christopher Hitchens (Reader)
Christopher Hitchens was an English-born American author, journalist and literary critic. He was a columnist at Vanity Fair, The Atlantic, World Affairs, The Nation, Slate, Free Inquiry, and a variety of other media in a career that spanned more than four decades and made him a prominent public intellectual, and a staple of talk shows and lecture circuits. His books include The Monarchy; Blood, Class, and Nostalgia; No One Left to Lie Toand God Is Not Great. He died in 2011.
Lawrence Krauss (Reader)
Lawrence M. Krauss is the Chairman of Physics at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, Ohio where he lives.
Richard Dawkins (Author)
Richard Dawkins is author of The Selfish Gene, voted The Royal Society's Most Inspiring Science Book of All Time, and also the bestsellers The Blind Watchmaker, Climbing Mount Improbable, The Ancestor's Tale, The God Delusion, and two volumes of autobiography, An Appetite for Wonder and Brief Candle in the Dark. He is an emeritus fellow of New College, Oxford and a fellow of both the Royal Society and the Royal Society of Literature. In 2013, Dawkins was voted the world’s top thinker in Prospect magazine’s poll of 10,000 readers from over 100 countries.
Neil deGrasse Tyson (Reader)
Neil deGrasse Tyson was born in New York City the same week NASA was founded. After a BA in Physics from Harvard, a PhD in Astrophysics from Columbia, and a Postdoctoral research fellowship at Princeton, Tyson become the Frederick P. Rose Director of the Hayden Planetarium, where he has served since 1996. Neil is the host of the award-winning Cosmos TV series, and StarTalk, the first ever science-based talk show and podcast. He has over 13 million Twitter followers, among the top 200 people in the world.
Adam Hart-Davis (Reader)
Multitalented Adam Hart-Davis is a scientist, photographer, writer and broadcaster. He has presented programmes including What the Tudors Did for Us, What the Victorians Did for Us and Science Shack. Adam is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts and acts as a judge in many photographic competitions including Novartis.
Steven Pinker (Reader)
Steven Pinker is an experimental cognitive scientist. Currently Johnstone Professor of Psychology at Harvard, he has also taught at Stanford and MIT. He has won many prizes for his research, teaching, and his eleven books, including The Language Instinct, How the Mind Works, The Blank Slate, The Better Angels of Our Nature, and Enlightenment Now. He is a member of the National Academy of Sciences, a two-time Pulitzer Prize finalist, a Humanist of the Year, a recipient of nine honorary doctorates, one of Foreign Policy's 'World's Top 100 Public Intellectuals' and Time's '100 Most Influential People in the World Today'.
Christopher Hitchens (Reader)
Christopher Hitchens was an English-born American author, journalist and literary critic. He was a columnist at Vanity Fair, The Atlantic, World Affairs, The Nation, Slate, Free Inquiry, and a variety of other media in a career that spanned more than four decades and made him a prominent public intellectual, and a staple of talk shows and lecture circuits. His books include The Monarchy; Blood, Class, and Nostalgia; No One Left to Lie Toand God Is Not Great. He died in 2011.
Lawrence Krauss (Reader)
Lawrence M. Krauss is the Chairman of Physics at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, Ohio where he lives.
Richard Dawkins (Author)
Richard Dawkins is author of The Selfish Gene, voted The Royal Society's Most Inspiring Science Book of All Time, and also the bestsellers The Blind Watchmaker, Climbing Mount Improbable, The Ancestor's Tale, The God Delusion, and two volumes of autobiography, An Appetite for Wonder and Brief Candle in the Dark. He is an emeritus fellow of New College, Oxford and a fellow of both the Royal Society and the Royal Society of Literature. In 2013, Dawkins was voted the world’s top thinker in Prospect magazine’s poll of 10,000 readers from over 100 countries.
Neil deGrasse Tyson (Reader)
Neil deGrasse Tyson was born in New York City the same week NASA was founded. After a BA in Physics from Harvard, a PhD in Astrophysics from Columbia, and a Postdoctoral research fellowship at Princeton, Tyson become the Frederick P. Rose Director of the Hayden Planetarium, where he has served since 1996. Neil is the host of the award-winning Cosmos TV series, and StarTalk, the first ever science-based talk show and podcast. He has over 13 million Twitter followers, among the top 200 people in the world.
Adam Hart-Davis (Reader)
Multitalented Adam Hart-Davis is a scientist, photographer, writer and broadcaster. He has presented programmes including What the Tudors Did for Us, What the Victorians Did for Us and Science Shack. Adam is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts and acts as a judge in many photographic competitions including Novartis.
Steven Pinker (Reader)
Steven Pinker is an experimental cognitive scientist. Currently Johnstone Professor of Psychology at Harvard, he has also taught at Stanford and MIT. He has won many prizes for his research, teaching, and his eleven books, including The Language Instinct, How the Mind Works, The Blank Slate, The Better Angels of Our Nature, and Enlightenment Now. He is a member of the National Academy of Sciences, a two-time Pulitzer Prize finalist, a Humanist of the Year, a recipient of nine honorary doctorates, one of Foreign Policy's 'World's Top 100 Public Intellectuals' and Time's '100 Most Influential People in the World Today'.
Christopher Hitchens (Reader)
Christopher Hitchens was an English-born American author, journalist and literary critic. He was a columnist at Vanity Fair, The Atlantic, World Affairs, The Nation, Slate, Free Inquiry, and a variety of other media in a career that spanned more than four decades and made him a prominent public intellectual, and a staple of talk shows and lecture circuits. His books include The Monarchy; Blood, Class, and Nostalgia; No One Left to Lie Toand God Is Not Great. He died in 2011.
Lawrence Krauss (Reader)
Lawrence M. Krauss is the Chairman of Physics at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, Ohio where he lives.
Richard Dawkins (Author)
Richard Dawkins is author of The Selfish Gene, voted The Royal Society's Most Inspiring Science Book of All Time, and also the bestsellers The Blind Watchmaker, Climbing Mount Improbable, The Ancestor's Tale, The God Delusion, and two volumes of autobiography, An Appetite for Wonder and Brief Candle in the Dark. He is an emeritus fellow of New College, Oxford and a fellow of both the Royal Society and the Royal Society of Literature. In 2013, Dawkins was voted the world’s top thinker in Prospect magazine’s poll of 10,000 readers from over 100 countries.
Neil deGrasse Tyson (Reader)
Neil deGrasse Tyson was born in New York City the same week NASA was founded. After a BA in Physics from Harvard, a PhD in Astrophysics from Columbia, and a Postdoctoral research fellowship at Princeton, Tyson become the Frederick P. Rose Director of the Hayden Planetarium, where he has served since 1996. Neil is the host of the award-winning Cosmos TV series, and StarTalk, the first ever science-based talk show and podcast. He has over 13 million Twitter followers, among the top 200 people in the world.
Adam Hart-Davis (Reader)
Multitalented Adam Hart-Davis is a scientist, photographer, writer and broadcaster. He has presented programmes including What the Tudors Did for Us, What the Victorians Did for Us and Science Shack. Adam is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts and acts as a judge in many photographic competitions including Novartis.
Steven Pinker (Reader)
Steven Pinker is an experimental cognitive scientist. Currently Johnstone Professor of Psychology at Harvard, he has also taught at Stanford and MIT. He has won many prizes for his research, teaching, and his eleven books, including The Language Instinct, How the Mind Works, The Blank Slate, The Better Angels of Our Nature, and Enlightenment Now. He is a member of the National Academy of Sciences, a two-time Pulitzer Prize finalist, a Humanist of the Year, a recipient of nine honorary doctorates, one of Foreign Policy's 'World's Top 100 Public Intellectuals' and Time's '100 Most Influential People in the World Today'.
Christopher Hitchens (Reader)
Christopher Hitchens was an English-born American author, journalist and literary critic. He was a columnist at Vanity Fair, The Atlantic, World Affairs, The Nation, Slate, Free Inquiry, and a variety of other media in a career that spanned more than four decades and made him a prominent public intellectual, and a staple of talk shows and lecture circuits. His books include The Monarchy; Blood, Class, and Nostalgia; No One Left to Lie Toand God Is Not Great. He died in 2011.
Lawrence Krauss (Reader)
Lawrence M. Krauss is the Chairman of Physics at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, Ohio where he lives.
Richard Dawkins (Author)
Richard Dawkins is author of The Selfish Gene, voted The Royal Society's Most Inspiring Science Book of All Time, and also the bestsellers The Blind Watchmaker, Climbing Mount Improbable, The Ancestor's Tale, The God Delusion, and two volumes of autobiography, An Appetite for Wonder and Brief Candle in the Dark. He is an emeritus fellow of New College, Oxford and a fellow of both the Royal Society and the Royal Society of Literature. In 2013, Dawkins was voted the world’s top thinker in Prospect magazine’s poll of 10,000 readers from over 100 countries.
Neil deGrasse Tyson (Reader)
Neil deGrasse Tyson was born in New York City the same week NASA was founded. After a BA in Physics from Harvard, a PhD in Astrophysics from Columbia, and a Postdoctoral research fellowship at Princeton, Tyson become the Frederick P. Rose Director of the Hayden Planetarium, where he has served since 1996. Neil is the host of the award-winning Cosmos TV series, and StarTalk, the first ever science-based talk show and podcast. He has over 13 million Twitter followers, among the top 200 people in the world.
Adam Hart-Davis (Reader)
Multitalented Adam Hart-Davis is a scientist, photographer, writer and broadcaster. He has presented programmes including What the Tudors Did for Us, What the Victorians Did for Us and Science Shack. Adam is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts and acts as a judge in many photographic competitions including Novartis.
Steven Pinker (Reader)
Steven Pinker is an experimental cognitive scientist. Currently Johnstone Professor of Psychology at Harvard, he has also taught at Stanford and MIT. He has won many prizes for his research, teaching, and his eleven books, including The Language Instinct, How the Mind Works, The Blank Slate, The Better Angels of Our Nature, and Enlightenment Now. He is a member of the National Academy of Sciences, a two-time Pulitzer Prize finalist, a Humanist of the Year, a recipient of nine honorary doctorates, one of Foreign Policy's 'World's Top 100 Public Intellectuals' and Time's '100 Most Influential People in the World Today'.
Christopher Hitchens (Reader)
Christopher Hitchens was an English-born American author, journalist and literary critic. He was a columnist at Vanity Fair, The Atlantic, World Affairs, The Nation, Slate, Free Inquiry, and a variety of other media in a career that spanned more than four decades and made him a prominent public intellectual, and a staple of talk shows and lecture circuits. His books include The Monarchy; Blood, Class, and Nostalgia; No One Left to Lie Toand God Is Not Great. He died in 2011.
Lawrence Krauss (Reader)
Lawrence M. Krauss is the Chairman of Physics at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, Ohio where he lives.
Reviews
Richard Dawkins is fine scientist, rigorous thinker and supremely gifted writer. His books are justly famous, but his shorter works are just as good. Here is a rich feast of his essays, reviews, forewords, squibs and conversations, in which talent and passion are married to deep knowledge.Dawkins' books are full of passion as well as reason, human warmth as well as rational detachment, literature as well as science. Richard Dawkins is one of the finest English prose stylists of the past fifty years. Plenty of other scientists write well, but no one writes like Dawkins.
This collection is mostly made up of reviews, introductions and the like-and anyone who writes at a virtuoso level for such ephemera is a wordsmith to be reckoned with. (Compare Samuel Johnson's masterpieces in similar genres.) Even the shortest pieces are not one-line, workaday reviews, but full of originality and insight...
The content of the book is as excellent as its style-indeed, the two are intertwined. Some pieces are short, some long, all fascinating. The range is also astonishing: here is Dawkins the teacher, the scholar, the polemicist, the joker, the aesthete, the poet, the satirist, the man of compassion as well as indignation, the slayer of superstition and, above all, the scientist. With his treatment of everything from evolutionary psychology to the temptations of supposedly sophisticated theology, from African Eve to the beauty of the Galápagos, from the virtual reality software in our brains to postmodern baloney and the inspiration to be found in great science fiction, Dawkins excites, surprises and nourishes the mind.