1.
Animal Reading
2.
'Painting' and 'Sculpture'
3.
In the depths of the palimpsest
4.
reverse engineering
5.
Common problems, common solutions
6.
Variations on the theme
7.
Living memory
8.
immortal genes
9.
Beyond our walls
10.
A genetic perspective
11.
More reflections in the rearview mirror
12.
Good colleagues, bad colleagues
13.
A common exit to the future

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Acknowledgements
About the Author and Illustrator
Translator's Note
References
Image source
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Evolution is an immortal record written in our genes.
Richard Dawkins's later masterpiece

This book is the latest work by Richard Dawkins, a world-renowned scholar who is considered to have changed the paradigm of evolution and genetics. The author's cool-headed insight and uniquely witty writing style stand out.
Dawkins goes a step further than the gene-centric view presented in The Selfish Gene by viewing evolution as a chronicle of the past, a book written and edited by Darwinian natural selection.
Dawkins argues that each individual is a kind of book, an unfinished literary work, and an archive of history.
The body and genome of an individual contain information that allows us to infer a colorful world that was long gone but continued.
In other words, we can say that in a sense, we are the 'genetic book of the dead'.
At the same time, the lion's genealogy is also a book of predictions for the future.
Each genome selects genes that are advantageous for survival and reproduction under the reasonable assumption that the future will not be much different from the past, and this selection is generally successful.
From this perspective, Dawkins goes beyond the gene-centric perspective to 'look back' at the past and 'reflect' it in a kind of rearview mirror through a phenomenon called biological imprinting.
In addition to this, Dawkins uses various animals, plants, fungi, bacteria, and even archaea to explain his interesting perspectives to readers in an easy-to-understand way.
The illustrations included in the book's text stimulate further intellectual curiosity in readers.
The colorful illustrations and photographs that complement the book's content aid the reader's understanding, while providing the pleasure of reading as a general science book rather than a rigid theoretical text.
Another feature is that it introduces a fictional female scientist, Soap, into the story from time to time, making academic content, which could easily become stiff and difficult, more interesting.

Throughout the book, the author meticulously explains how the environment surrounding an organism and the processes and decisions of natural selection involved in it are engraved into its genes.
In this process, he weaves together concepts discussed in detail in his previous works, such as The Selfish Gene and The Extended Phenotype, which can be considered his masterpieces, into a single story, as if weaving a net.
This book, which seems to be a collection of various arguments that Dawkins has made in many of his famous works, is also filled with the author's unique perspectives and metaphors, allowing readers to view the nature surrounding them from a new perspective.


Looking at the records of death
A new paradigm of evolution

This book deals with somewhat unfamiliar and difficult topics such as evolution, natural selection, and genes, but it also develops the story by introducing interesting yet familiar cases such as camouflage, mimicry, and convergent evolution.
Dawkins delves into the many meanings contained in the bizarre appearances of living things we often see in science documentaries.
Through this, it is explained in detail that the reason why living things appear strange in some ways and difficult to understand in others is because it is all the influence of genes that record past records and a kind of prediction.

For example, the distinctive skin color and patterns seen in the Mojave Desert's horned lizards are the result of genetic predictions that these individuals would be born in the desert.
The desert horned lizard's genes predict that the individual it passes on to its offspring will be born in a sandy, rocky desert, and they adjust the lizard's skin and patterns to suit the desert environment.
In other words, if it were technically possible, we could analyze the genes of a desert horned lizard to not only predict its skin color, but also find out what kind of environment it would live in.
Genes can be read as a single document containing the ancestral world.
In the case of the desert horned lizard, not only the skin color and pattern, but also all the organs, cells, and biochemical processes are meticulously structured to suit the desert environment in which their ancestors lived.
Dawkins says that the records of the present changing environment and mutations are overlaid on these records of genes.
This process can be seen as similar to the parchment (palimpsest) used in the West long ago, where old writing was erased and new writing was written on top.
In addition, the book explains death and the power of heredity to overcome it, using examples of various rare creatures.
This clearly shows why Dawkins is loved by readers as a top scientist and writer.
This book is a masterpiece that is on par with his representative works, The Selfish Gene and The Extended Phenotype.


“Adding depth to the natural world through original developments.”
- "Kirkus Review"

“A colorful journey through nature from the perspective of genes.
Why Dawkins is still the best
“It reminds me again that I am a scientist.”
- The Times