An: The Making of a Scientist, Appetite for Wonder

Richard Dawkins is one of my personal heros. His understanding of science is outstanding, his ability to explain it is remarkable, and his ability, to make sense of complex and subtle topics puts him at the top of the list of science writers. He also can tell a good story in a down to earth way. It was fascinating to hear how he came to this point in "An Appetite for Wonder".

Richard Dawkins is a fascinating figure not necessarily because of his scientific achievements (although they are impressive) but for his ability to think differently and against powerful adversaries have his message heard.

The only section of this book that I found interesting was the section at the end on the writing of a Selfish Gene. If I wanted to know about Dawkins research I would have gone and read his papers (for some I've already done this). In a biography I look for more insight into what's shaped the man and his theories. I'm also looking for a realistic viewpoint of what life was life and struggles encountered along the way.

I found Dawkins book to be more of a general overview of his research than a view into his life. For me, this was disappointing.

I have read other Dawkins books where I was fascinated from start to finish , this was different it just seemed to go on and on finally I had to stop, I bought a Bill Nye book instead and once again became fascinated with what I was reading .

As a great admirer of Richard Dawkins since the publication of his "Selfish Gene" I have read all his books in which he has so eloquently and convincingly put the case for evolution. His latest book "An Appetite For Wonder: The Making of a Scientist "
is a fascinating, interesting and well written book about his early life and his introduction to a most wonderful career. I would recommend this book not only to those who have read his previous publications but to anyone interested in the evolutionary sciences.
I look forward in anticipation to his next publication.

I enjoyed the descriptions of all the family members. How so many generations attended Balliol College, and what they got from their experiences and education. The fact that Richard had a taste of Africe and how it relates to him. His appreciation of all those many friends and colleagues who helped and inspired him. I found him a humble man, he realizes that his hard work and love for his subject lead to his fame. I am lucky to have found him and loved the many books of his that I have read.
Margaret Reid - South Africa

I quit this book after a couple chapters. This is memoir or autobiography, and not nearly the "the making a scientist" I had hoped for. This could be entertaining in and of itself, except that Mr. Dawkins has apparently fallen into the trap of his own ego. It seems to me that this is a book written for his boot-lickers, with every minor and useless detail of his early life blandly dumped upon this table for those rabid to pick up any bit of drivel that comes from his quill. I'm glad I only paid a couple bucks while it was on sale.

An Appetite for Wonder: The Making of a Scientist by Richard Dawkins

"An Appetite for Wonder" is an intimate memoir of the childhood and development of iconic scientist and renowned atheist, Richard Dawkins. The book covers the first half of his life up until the publishing of his first book and masterpiece, "The Selfish Gene". This enjoyable and heartfelt 320-page book includes the following chapters: Genes and pith helmets, Camp followers in Kenya, The land of the lake, Eagle in the mountains, Farewell to Africa, Photographic Insert 1, Under Salisbury's spire, `And your English summer's done', The spire by the Nene, Photographic Insert 2, Dreaming spires, Learning the trade, West Coast dreamtime, Computer fix, Photographic Insert 3, The grammar of behavior, The immortal gene, and Looking back down the path.

Positives:
1. Engaging, warm account of his childhood and early science years.
2. Dawkins is very candid and forthright in his memoir. Not afraid to be self-deprecating and uncharacteristically pleasant throughout the book.
3. Three photographic inserts really complement the elegant writing style of Dawkins. A lovely family and fascinating stories and surprises from his childhood.
4. Fascinating life. The book takes you to Africa where the young Dawkins spent most of his childhood at. Interesting challenges and very candid and respectful of how times were back then. "My next two memories are both of injections: the first by Dr Trim in Kenya and the second (more painful) by a scorpion, later in Nyasaland." I'm not going to spoil it...bust rest assured, amusing stories.
5. The things that are of interest to Dawkins. "I have always been interested in the deep questions of existence, the questions that religion aspires (and fails) to answer, but I have been fortunate to live in a time when such questions are given scientific rather than supernatural answers."
6. The book that had the biggest influence on the young Dawkins.
7. Surprisingly forthcoming. "I was probably a disappointment as a naturalist, too, despite the rare privilege of spending a day with the young David Attenborough, when we were both guests of my Uncle Bill and Aunt Diana."
8. Surprising issues such as bullying and peer pressure. "We wanted to be accepted by our fellows, especially the influential natural leaders among us; and the ethos of my peers was - until my last year at Oundle - anti-intellectual."
9. Find out when exactly Dawkins became anti-religious. "If you are going to allow yourself to conjure a designer out of thin air, why not apply the same indulgence to that which he is supposed to have designed, and cut out, so to speak, the middle man?"
10. The musicians that inspired and moved Dawkins.
11. Dawkins, Oxford and higher education. "I said that Oxford was the making of me, but really it was the tutorial system, which happens to be characteristic of Oxford and Cambridge."
12. It wouldn't be a book about Dawkins if the grand theory of evolution wasn't a part of it. "He introduced me to, among other things, his - and now my - favourite example of revealingly bad `design' in animals: the recurrent laryngeal nerve."
13. The moment where Dawkins reveal where his life changed stated unequivocally.
14. The most important mentors of Dawkins' life. "The senior figure in 13 Bevington Road was Mike Cullen, probably the most important mentor in my life - and I believe most of my contemporaries in the Animal Behaviour Research Group (ABRG) would agree."
15. His surprising love-affair with computers. "I published a paper on the Dawkins Organ, and made the software available free of charge."
16. The lectureship in animal behavior. "We planned a study that would exemplify, and clarify, one of the fundamental concepts of the ethological school of animal behaviour studies, the Fixed Action Pattern."
17. Dawkins' projects. "It did, however, feed into my next big writing project: a long theoretical paper on `Hierarchical organisation as a candidate principle for ethology'."
18. The behind-the-scenes view behind the making of "The Selfish Gene". "Gene survival is what really matters in natural selection."
19. The scientists and circumstances that inspired Dawkins to make "The Selfish Gene". "So Trivers' name was added to those of Hamilton and Williams among the four authors who had greatest influence on The Selfish Gene."
20. Links.

Negatives:
1. Poor Kindle formatting. The digital version absolutely butchered all the poems. Something that should be remedied soon I hope.
2. The book is first and foremost a memoir, if you are expecting a lot of science or even the Dawkins classic contentious philosophical flair against religion, you will be sorely disappointed. A review of some of the key concepts behind the selfish gene but limited science elsewhere.
3. I don't know if Dawkins really explains to satisfaction how and what he felt at that time some of the events occurred. He struggles at times to provide answers regarding his mindset and must rely on and in some cases understandably so, on accounts from third parties (mother).
4. A timeline of major events and locations would have added value.
5. Not the typical quote-fest that is so endearing to his admirers; yours truly included.
6. Avid fans and readers of Dawkins' books may feel that the book gets repetitive. Particularly those who have read "The Selfish Gene". That being said, there is some interesting behind the scenes revelations.

In summary, an interesting journey into the first half of Dawkins' life. This was a very easy and pleasant read. Dawkins is candid and forthcoming and shares an intimate look at his interesting life. The book revolves around his childhood and his early science years and the making of "The Selfish Gene". Perhaps a little light on the science and the fiery philosophy that we admire and love from Dawkins (I must admit I missed some of that); this is a memoir worth reading. I highly recommend it with the reservations noted.

Further recommendations: "The Selfish Gene: 30th Anniversary Edition" and "The Greatest Show on Earth: The Evidence for Evolution" by the same author, "Evolving out of Eden: Christian Responses to Evolution" by Robert M. Price, "Your Inner Fish: A Journey into the 3.5-Billion-Year History of the Human Body" by Neil Shubin, "Understanding Evolution and Ourselves" by Dennis Littrell, "Why Evolution Is True" by Jerry A. Coyne, "Evolution vs Creationism" by Eugenie C. Scott, "The Rocks Don't Lie" by David R. Montgomery, "What Evolution Is (Science Masters Series)" by Ernst Mayr, "Why Evolution Works (and Creationism Fails)" by Matt Young, "Evolution: What the Fossils Say and Why It Matters" by Donald R. Prothero, and "The Making of the Fittest: DNA and the Ultimate Forensic Record of Evolution" by Sean B. Carroll.

I have loved Dawkins' previous books and consider The Selfish Gene to be one of the best popularly accessible books on Science that I have ever read. An Appetite for Wonder lacks the scintillating writing of the previous works and reads like a less interesting version of the life it describes.
Jasper Rine
Berkeley

Mr. Dawkins must be so preoccupied with genes that he has lost touch with what makes him the man he is. The book attempts to focus on the first half of his life and his choice of events and characters to explore are so fragmented and unbalanced that you wonder if this book was just an excuse to make some quick cash. Full of repetitions and space fillers. Many a passages copy pasted from other books and articles and random nursery songs that no wonder 17% of it is the index!

The British system, with its castes, private schools, and the intimacy of an intellectual class concentrated in London and the not-at-all distant Oxford means that important people know each other. More than that, they marry one another. Dawkins recitation of his genealogy reminds me of that of Charles Darwin, the Huxley's, the Mill family and other comfortable middle-class families that managed to spawn generation after generation of bright and/or brilliant minds. Francis Galton, the scion of one such family, wrote a book entitled Hereditary Genius in which he documented the phenomenon in family after family.

Dawkins knows his lineage going back at least to the 16th century, and it is a mixture of minor nobility, people of distinction one way or another, a scoundrel here and there, but generally a quite good class of people. Though he says his parents never had a great deal of money, their habits of mind were of people who had the conviction that they mattered. One of the many delights of the book are the illustrations. Dawkins has a number of pictures of his childhood, and even out of his parents' and grandparents' childhoods. Many were posed in a way that makes you think they had the conviction that posterity would be interested in them. I offer this observation, as my American ancestors were probably similarly capable, but had a quite different view on life. As an American, I am unusual in that I know their names, but unlike Dawkins, I do not know their biographies. He comes from a unique and one might call privileged tradition. It comes with a noblesse oblige, a sense of obligation to accomplish something, and that is what Dawkins has done extraordinarily well.

Running an Empire required the best and brightest of British society, and Dawkins' parents and grandparents were involved in the colonial administrations of India and Africa. His account of his childhood in Africa is idyllic. Although he does not make conscious mention of the relationship with the native peoples, it comes through very clearly that the British were accepted as natural masters. They had a kind of paternalistic affection for the people who work for them, and in turn felt no fear traveling alone on the dirt roads connecting the far-flung settlements of East Africa.

Dawkins has a delightful gift for telling it like it is. His account is unfiltered, apparently as good as recollection can make it. He talks about bullying in the private schools he attended in a fairly matter-of-fact way. It existed - yes. It could be incredibly cruel. He confesses his shame in not defending his weaker classmates. Yet, he can see that the culture which supported bullying also seems to have brought out some of the better aspects of some people's natures. One may be a better person for having endured a bit of hazing.

The British schools of Dawkins youth also had corporal punishment. His account tallies with my recollections from California. There may have been sadists among the administration, but I never encountered them, and it seemed to me that most of the people who received punishment deserved it one way or another and survived just fine. It was one of many devices that the school administration used to maintain their authority. Students also dressed more or less appropriately, as young gentleman in formation rather than above-it-all louts.

Homosexuality was also a fixture in British private schools. Dawkins writes matter-of-factly of the masters and the older boys who came on to him, and also of the civil way in which they accepted his rejections. He makes the observation that when there are no women around, highly sexed young men are likely to turn to whatever is available. This refreshingly commonsensical observation is strongly at odds with current orthodoxies, which tend to paint homosexuality as an all or nothing, inborn orientation. Again, this tallies with my observations growing up in California. I regret to say that nubile young women never came on to me, but gays frequently did. However, they always took "no" for an answer. I'm glad not to have endured prolonged arguments about how uptight and abnormal I was.

Dawkins became aware of his interest in his talents while enrolled in Balliol College in Oxford. Actually, he spent most of his time not at the college but the university, a distinction which is rather lost on me but important to him. He was fortunate to have a genius mentor, later to be Nobel prize winner Niko Tinbergen. He mentions a number of very gifted men with an interest in teaching. There especially credits the course of instruction, which did not follow any fixed curriculum, but instead had students read PhD theses and other up-to-the-minute papers to learn the state-of-the-art in their fields of study, and then discuss it. This has always been one of the hallmarks of the major centers of learning: great minds come together, they encourage, excite, and correct one another.

One of the things the great minds also do is come in conflict with one another. Dawkins is very sparing with his discussion of academic disputes, mentioning only one between Tinbergen and the American Lardner, in which he puts most of the emphasis on the reconciliation and the ability of the men to work together. They were not reconciled to the American Marxist biologists from Harvard, Richard Lewontin and Steven Rose. These were colleagues of Stephen Jay Gould, at Harvard, and by all reports are willing to put their political beliefs above their scientific integrity.

The last autobiographical entry in the book is his publication of The Selfish Gene in 1975. He had the idea, received a lot of encouragement and support from his colleagues, actually had publishers chasing him for a first book, and was expresses pleasant surprise that it turned out to be as successful as it was. He was also surprised that the thesis turned out to be so controversial. Within the world of academics, it had seemed rather obvious.

Dawkins's final chapter is an assessment of his life and accomplishments. He acknowledges that he was very favorably positioned, with two biologists as parents. The childhood in Africa may as well have been an asset, though he cannot say. As I noted in my introductory paragraph, I think that he benefited considerably from family history. He had some illustrious ancestors, and there was no doubt some expectation that he would do something of note with his own life.

Dawkins assesses his gifts. His quite good at picking up music, not very good at all that reading it. He is not a terribly astute observer. He claims never to have mastered higher math, although he turned out to be a genius programmer, a skill which most people would say is closely related. He appears to have benefited from his congeniality, easy-going nature and good looks.

We know that it takes a certain intelligence, probably measurable, to turn out prose as lucid as his books. It takes a collegiality, a level of curiosity, and a great deal of hard work to conduct experiments such as he did during his early research. This brings us to his computer programming, which he undertook just about the very moment that computers became available. I am a programmer, not a bad one, and I stand in awe of the matter-of-fact account that he gives of the things he programmed. He programmed a couple of compilers, a computer language translating program, and a number of real-time applications before the word real-time had even been invented. The Selfish Gene focuses more than had I thought that it should have on computer programming. I now understand why, and understand that the algorithms he described in that book were of scientific interest, but from a data processing point of view, other things he was doing at the same time probably demanded greater intellect. In any case, I am impressed.

Dawkins is perhaps best known as an atheist. Only a bit of that comes through. He talks quite a bit about the Anglican influence on his childhood, and the passion reflected in his atheism may be a mirror of the passionate belief to which he was exposed as a child. One of the things I like about this book in previous books is his quotation of poetry and especially hymns. The foreword of one of his other books - I don't remember which - included the great Anglican hymn: "Time like an ever rolling stream bears all for sons away. They die forgotten as a dream dies at the break of day."

I will close with a wry note. His entire thesis is that we are self replicators, and that everything that we do inclines us to reproduce ourselves. Why doesn't he see how important religion is in this? He need look no further than Robert Trivers, who wrote the introduction to The Selfish Gene. Irrationality is an important part of our nature. In particular, when it comes to reproduction, having children does nothing of benefit to the phenotype. Children are expensive both in terms of cash and time. Why would anybody have them? It is an irrational act. Precisely. And it takes the kind of irrationality generally called religion. I would ask that Dawkins at least investigate the fact that it is a paradox. However much religion cannot be proven, it may be essential to our survival. And if he wants his own progeny to someday glance admiringly at their handsome and accomplished progenitor, he should probably have kinder words for Anglicanism.

The first chapter in this first volume of Dawkins’ autobiography is mainly about his ancestors, going back to the 18th century. Some readers may not be all that interested in them; and, in any case, the account is hard to follow, especially on the Kindle, because the family tree at the beginning of the book is too small to read without a magnifying glass and, unlike the printed edition, is awkward to get back to.

The second chapter leaves all this behind, and is altogether charming. Dawkins’ father was in the agricultural department of the Colonial Service, and had been posted to East Africa. Richard was born in Kenya in 1941 and spent his first two years there and the next six in Nyasaland. His mother wrote up those days in a diary, and very vividly, too: there are many excerpts from it. She also recorded Richard’s doings and funny sayings. Like all small children, he believed what he was told – e.g. that animals who have died go the Happy Hunting Ground – and the adult Dawkins comments on how wrong it is to tell children such falsehoods. He had a very happy childhood, and was miserable only when the family went to England on leave and during his two terms at a boarding school in Southern Rhodesia. Both his parents were interested in science, and at about the age of six, Richard, too, began to be fascinated by it.

In 1949 his father inherited a farming estate in Oxfordshire, and the family left Africa. Richard went to a boarding school in Salisbury, and from there he would go on to Oundle. (For his American readers he explains what the English mean by prep schools and public schools.) His account of his prep school days is very readable, but not very significant except for his reflections on how, as a child, he could cheerfully witness bullying, and of course on how readily he believed things he was told, not just terrifying stories told by another boy but, more importantly, about religion. The same goes for his chapter on his time at Oundle, with a lot of pleasant but not very important reminiscences, but ending, when he was sixteen or seventeen, with him becoming ostentatiously rejecting Christianity and all other particular religions, though for a time he “bamboozled” himself into believing in the “elementary fallacy” that there is a God who had designed the world. It was not long before he rejected that idea, too, in favour of Darwin and natural selection. But, considering Dawkins’ militant atheism, there is relatively little of it in this volume – perhaps it became more of an obsession for him in later life, and perhaps he will deal with it in the next volume of his autobiography, which will deal with the period in which he published “The God Delusion” (2006).

From Oundle he went to Balliol College, Oxford, to read Zoology. The chapter on his undergraduate days follows the same pattern: pleasant reminiscences, explanations of Oxford college and university life which will be familiar to any who have been there (but not to Americans – I always have the feeling that the author always remembers his American market); and then aspects of zoology, such as the interaction of genes with each other, which thrilled him but which are perhaps a little hard going for some readers. Here and later he is unstintingly generous in his tributes the academics who taught him, inspired him, or developed his ideas.

We are just over half-way through the book when Dawkins becomes a post-graduate research worker (and later a Fellow of New College) and describes some of his experiments, notably the pecking behaviour of chicken, in great detail, which unfortunately is beyond my understanding. Much of this work was statistical and involved the use of early computers of the 1960s – huge machines spewing out paper tapes. He also goes into details about the programmes he wrote for these early models and about what he managed to get these early models to do – all Greek to me. I am afraid it has put me off reading the second volume of his autobiography.

I understood better the central idea – though not all its implications - of the theory of the “Selfish Gene”: that it is the individual and not the species that is the vehicle for transmitting genes (some successful, others less so) to the next generation. The book (his first) also launched the concept of the meme (the replicator of ideas, as a gene is the replicator of physical attributes). The story of how he came to start on the book (during the miners’ strike in 1973, when frequent power cuts forced him to interrupt his computer-based research on crickets), how it came to be published (in 1976 when he was 35, and how it was so sensationally successful makes a fine ending to this volume.

For quality I am sure the book deserves five stars, even though at least a quarter of it was beyond my understanding. But what I did understand was beautifully written and very enjoyable.

Spoken book are a great. Spoken books read by the Author are usually better. Prof. Richard Dawkins has a very pleasant voice, he sounds much younger than he is. The additional readings from his mother's diaries , as read by Lalla Ward adds a nice touch. That said, Prof. Dawkins is far more fascinated with his childhood years than many readers are likely to be. As such I found volume one of his memoirs, An Appetite for Wonder to be disappointing.

He was born in an interesting place, Nairobi, Kenya in 1943. This would be an interesting place during the War Years, but not much of a part of his memory. At age eight his family moved back to England where his coming of age included a large if poorly restored estate and English public school experiences much like other English public school experiences. Ultimately he would eke his way into Oxford and by the end of the book launch himself into scientific stardom with the publication of his first book; The Selfish Gene: 30th Anniversary Edition--with a new Introduction by the Author

For much of this book the interesting stuff is just outside of the frame. Too much of these years are about the very young Richard. Out of 7 CD's he has just begun to read in disk 4.

Some of the made up songs of his father sound interesting, we get very little more than the tittles. Richard's earliest attempts to speak and his baby babble gets old fast. The ongoing battle between Richard's speculations that as a young child he was too credulous or too hard to fool is not that interesting. If Professor Dawkins had to make volume I cover so many pages, the events and people around him could have better illuminated our understanding of the man. As a Child, I understand him to have been very much a child of his class and time.

Of his Public school years we do get to learn about the people who were educators, or to mark time in teaching positions. That he gives credit to those who inspired and guided was a nice touch. Teachers rarely get this kind of recognition, by name, from those who have taken what was offered and become more than the next generation of clock punchers.
In the last part of the last two disks, we begin hear from Professor Hawkins the researcher and community activist. His association with the California Aquarius days and associated political movements was news to me. More time on this topic and less on baby talk, please. Ultimately we get some behind the scenes look at the preliminaries and genesis of the The Selfish Gene.

Having finally reached the topics that brought me to this book , the book ends.
I hold in my hand the CD jacket. The back cover does almost hint that this is a first book and completes its discussion of his childhood in 3 lines. The balance of the back cover is on other topics and the usual blurbs used to sell a book.
If only Prof. Dawkins had used a similar ratio. Less time on Richard in his nappies and more time of Student, later Professor Dawkins at his computers and early research.

Richard Dawkins is an amazing scientist. I have always thought so and this first part in his autobiography trilogy do reinforce my favorable view on Dawkins. His greatness, in my opinion, primarily lies in his unequaled ability to convey science to the general public using a language which should make him eligible for the Nobel prize in literature (seriously!). His book, the selfish gene is probably the book that have meant the most to me personally, all categories, and reading excerpts from it in this book made me remember what a great book it was, and still is. In fact, reading “An appetite for wonder”, made me decide to re-read Dawkins original best-seller (which I am now doing).

Yes, Dawkins is a fantastic writer and scientist, but this book, on the whole, did not live up to my admittedly high expectations. Perhaps others will disagree with me but I am not personally very interested in great people’s childhood, unless it is truly extraordinary. Yes Dawkins grew up in Africa and that was probably interesting, however, I would personally have preferred if this section was significantly shorter or left out.

The book gets more interesting when Richard gets into Balliol college, Oxford. As a University teacher one of my favorite sections of the book was Dawkins description of the education system in Oxford. Their system in which students each week study a new topic by reading up on the scientific literature and try to form hypotheses, and then discuss what they have learnt with tutors who are also leading scientists made me, well… jealous. He claims that students at oxford never asked the question, “will this be on the exam?”, which is a question I get all too frequently…

Following his description of the education system in Oxford a semi-interesting description of his early years in academia follows. The book, in my opinion reaches its climax towards the end when Dawkins discusses and reads excerpts from the Selfish Gene. I realize it may sound nerdy but just hearing a few lines from that book can increase my pulse significantly, and it was interesting to get to understand how the book came about. I was also pleased to find out that, like myself, the great writer Richard Dawkins does not write his book in one go. Rather, every sentence that he writes have been written and re-written many times. Like the natural selection of biological organisms, this way of writing should lead to evolution of better sentences and in the end a better book. This is certainly the case with the Selfish Gene.

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"I became a secret reader. In the holidays from boarding school, I would sneak up to my bedroom with a book: a guilty truant from the fresh air and the virtuous outdoors. And when I started learning biology properly at school, it was still bookish pursuits that held me. I was drawn to questions that grown-ups would have called philosophical. What is the meaning of life? Why are we here? How did it all start?"

The above comes from this tell-all memoir from the author of such best-sellers as "The Selfish Gene" (1976), "The Blind Watchmaker" (1986), "The God Delusion" (2006), and "The Magic of Reality" (2011), RICHARD DAWKINS. He is a Fellow of both the Royal Society and the Royal Society of Literature. Dawkins has received numerous honours and awards especially in science. He retired from his position as Professor for the Public Understanding of Science at Oxford University in 2008.

In 2012, a new genus name called "Dawkinsia" was created in recognition of his contribution to the public understanding of evolutionary science. In 2013, Dawkins was voted the world's top thinker in "Prospect" magazine's poll (of 10,000 readers from over 100 countries).

This book is actually the first book in his two-part memoir. (The second book will be released sometime in 2015). As Dawkins tells us:

"Publication of 'The Selfish Gene' [in 1976] marks the end of the first half of my life."

In this first book, Dawkins tells us everything from his birth in Africa in 1941, his parents, and he even delves a bit into his family tree. Then he moved to England when he was eight. We learn of his early school and family experiences. After this he went to Oxford University in 1959 where many positive influences on his life occurred. This first book, as already mentioned, culminates with the publication of "The Selfish Gene," thought by many to be one of the most important books of the twentieth century.

Along the way, Dawkins tells us his views on such things as religion, critical thinking, how he was entranced with computers, his regrets, etc.

I especially enjoyed the last two chapters of this book. The penultimate chapter deals with the phenomenal "The Selfish Gene" while the final chapter, amongst other things, is a tribute to Charles Darwin, Dawkins' "greatest scientific hero."

Finally, there are three sets of glossy photographs in this book (some in colour, some in black and white). I found that these enhanced the main narrative.

In conclusion, this is the first in a two-set autobiography by one of the greatest minds of our time: Clinton Richard Dawkins.

(first published 2013; 15 chapters; main narrative 295 pages; acknowledgements; text and picture acknowledgements; index; about the author)

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Professor Dawkins has the most wonderful way of writing. I am highly dyslexic and as you may guess, I have a limited vocabulary compare to the average person but still I had no problem whatsoever in understanding this book. He takes you on that journey with him, singing, telling jokes and doing impressions. I laughed and learnt a lot. Maybe I may have associated a bit more with him and his story as I also went to a British boarding school and recognized many of the traditions that he was mentioning. Still I think it was magical and delivered beautifully. I read in other reviews that his story wasn't inspirational enough but I beg to disagree. Real life is not a superhero story and to me his story was most inspirational, he explained that he wasn't anything out of the ordinary and even struggled at times but yet look what he has achieved in life and where he is today, that gives someone like me hope that I may also have the chance to go far in life with hard work and persistence as he did.

Memoirs are notoriously difficult to write. It's easy for writers to say to oneself, "I find myself endlessly fascinating, and so should every one else." And you would think that a writer and a scientist as gifted as Richard Dawkins would be endlessly fascinating, but that's really not the case.

The memoir (SPOILER ALERT: It's just one of many to come) begins by tracing the genealogy of the Dawkins family and ends with the publication of Richard Dawkins' first book "The Selfish Gene."

So how do you make an eminent scientist? It helps to come from a family of scientists. It also helps to have a peripatetic childhood, especially in a place flush and lush with the wonders of nature as Africa. It helps to go to good boarding schools where tutors and headmasters will make indulgences for students' eccentricities and quirks, laziness and rebelliousness while still leveraging their intellectual and social capital to shepherd the students into Balliol or Trinity. And finally it helps to be under the tutelage of the most brilliant scientists of the age, and to have the luxury and the time to spend time being lost in thought and in books.

This is the first part of Richard Dawkins' memoir which initially takes us through his early years with his loving family in Africa. When he is eight, an unlikely inheritance sees them the owners of a farm in England and the family returns to the UK where his education continues with boarding school, Oundle (chosen, oddly, for its workshop) and then scraping into Balliol (to which he fails to win a scholarship). After two years in California at the height of 'flower-power', he returns to Oxford as a lecturer in zoology. Much of his educational life will be familiar territory to anyone who has read about prominent well-educated Englishmen of a certain age.

During his happy boyhood years, there were no particular signs of genius - as Richard Dawkins himself would be the first to admit - though he was clearly a clever boy. There is also little in this period to point to the controversial figure he was to become, other than a refusal in his mid-teens to kneel in chapel. The author comes across as a remarkably modest and considerate man (American readers may appreciate his thoughtful explanations of English colloquialisms). Also a generous one: he is magnanimous in his praise of his tutors and colleagues. He explains some of his research work and tries to make it understandable for his audience but it is largely incomprehensible to the lay reader - or at least to this one! His personal life and his innermost feelings are hardly touched upon which will doubtless leave readers feeling a little short-changed. This is more of a memoir about the work than the man.

The book finishes with the publication of The Selfish Gene and I do hope we will not have to wait too long to discover the life-changing effect this book was to have on him.

Dawkins book is very readable. He shows a clear and versatile mind. His story is interesting as one who was raised in a traditional English family. Colonial English life was the background and tradition for hi life. It colored his future. Insights into the English boarding school system from his perspective was great because it was favorable but critical at the same time. The heart of the book is the debate over nurture and nature. He uses himself as an example in the large sense and also in the narrow basic gene sense as well. He is one to take cracks at Christian foibles but points out sciences foibles as well. He does not hold back on where he stands on this or on nurture and nature. But personally I am not convinced.

Richard Dawkins is a professor of evolutionary biology, taught at University of California at Berkley and at Oxford University in England, and published several books dealing with evolution, and computer software simulation and its role in modern biology. The Selfish Gene was Dawkins’ most famous and widely read genetics book. An Appetite for Wonder is the first part of a two volume memoir and covers Dawkins’ life through the publication of that famous first book The Selfish Gene in 1976. The reader gets a behind the scenes view of Dawkins’ research methods, his continual curiosity about evolution. Dawkins is often labeled as the greatest atheist of our time, though only a small bit of it comes up in this book.

The early chapters of An Appetite for Wonder, where Dawkins describes his lineage, tracing back to 16th century ancestors, are rather long and tedious. He depicts a colonial administration running the British Empire: his grandfather served in India and Burma and his parents, both biologists, in Africa.

Dawkins was born in Nairobi, Kenya. He was not a child prodigy. Except for a rare instance, where he was bitten by a snake, Dawkins descriptions of an idyllic early East African childhood and events before he was born - which were mostly based on his mother’s journals – are not remarkable. He includes several poems, songs and hymns that seemed a digression to the main storyline.

The second half of the book, which follows Dawkins’ return to England, is more interesting. His boarding school experience provides insights into his transformation from Anglican religious beliefs into a skeptic and atheist. (Dawkins is often labeled as the greatest atheist of our time, though only a small bit of atheism comes up in this book.) In subsequent chapters, Dawkins describes the educational system in England, class divisions, and his work with the elitist intellectual class at Oxford, where he received his Ph.D. under Nobel Prize winner Nikko Tinbergen in the area of ethology, the study of animal behavior.

The reader experiences the inspiration and excitement Dawkins felt while conducting his research, and engages in spirited debates with other students and professors. We get a close-up view as Dawkins extends Charles Darwin’s theory of preservation of individual species. Though plants and animals eventually die, the genes tend towards immortality, by adapting to optimize their species’ reproductive chances. This research formed the basis for Dawkins book The Selfish Gene.

Dawkins’ easy prose provides an insider’s view of the pioneering research that was done in the great halls of academia; the first time use of computer programming for modeling hierarchical patterns in nature, which enabled later development of software simulation of more complex biological processes.

Dawkins has the ability to explain science to a non-scientist. His narrative of the early experiments and analysis of newborn chicks’ pecking patterns are easy to understand. He sprinkles the book with dry humor: A warden at Oxford once greeted a young man and asked: “Let me see. I never can remember, was it you or your brother was killed in the war?”

Overall, the book is a good read.

I received this book through a First Reads giveaway. Thank you!

This book covers Dawkins' life up to publishing The Selfish Gene, his very popular first book. It seems as though this story is to be continued in a second installment as well.

His early life, and before he was born, relies very much on his mother's journal entries. A time in WWII African while his father was involved with the war and he and his mother were moving around living with various other families. The story continues up through the years which is lived away at a boarding school in Africa and then in Europe.

He then goes on the describe in great detail his years at university studying zoology, moving to the US to work at a university in California, then shortly thereafter going back to Oxford.

Those early years I found the most interesting. Hearing about himself as a young child, the thoughts and beliefs he had and at what age he finally became the firm atheist he is today. His personality that shows through his writing is funny and very entertaining. It made for a very enjoyable read.

A pleasure to read and learn about Richard Dawkins’ childhood in Kenya and British education. I enjoyed reading about the development of his ideas and relationships with the mentors, who inspired him. His prose is delightful, balanced with wry wit and humor. He never fears the truth and goes to great lengths to convey his appetite for wonder, which I have always found inspirational.

There is much extraneous information, but as an adjunct for someone who has read his other books it is quite informative about his origins and family.

This was however my first exposure to him and so for me there may have been primarily a dozen or so pages that explained how he came to adopt his views on spirituality and morality.

Some humorous anecdotes and life experiences.

I certainly made an error ordering this book, simply because it's geared for adolescents and not for adults. The book, targeted for that specific audience, I found it a bit condescending. Again, my fault. I must add that I read a lot of what Mr. Dawkins writes.

I enjoyed learning about one of my heroes. Although some chapters were pretty boring, the chapters about his Oxford experiences were very interesting. Some parts were hilarious. He loves poetry so he included a lot of poetry, however I'm not a poetry guy, so I couldn't appreciate a good portion of the book. The last chapter was about him writing "The Selfish Gene" which adds great supplementary information for reading that book.

I admire Richard Dawkins, and have read prior books, such as The Blind Watchmaker, but this book was a complete waste of time. I can't believe people are giving it anything above 2 stars. It is a series of mostly boring and sometimes mildly (very mildly) amusing anecdotes from his daily life, starting from his earliest memories, which as you can imagine can be quite uninteresting to those not a part of his family. I found no insight whatsoever into what it's like to become a scientist.

Unusually for a scientist, Dawkins a fluent and engrossing writer. From his life overseas to English public schools and that ever inscrutable game called, cricket--Dawkins does a grand job of drawing the reader into and through his story.

The best part of Richard Dawkins' recently published memoir is its cover photo. The picture of youngish Dawkins captures the spark in his eyes and the felt sense of humor mixed with skepticism that so much characterize his career and other writings. But the memoir itself is tedious, and surprisingly so given his splendid popularization of biological and evolutionary science.

At any rate, not my cup of tea.

guilter7 gives the book one star, and ridicules it saying that it is no wonder that an audience laughs at 'something out of nothing'. Perhaps if guilter7 were more learned he would know what physicist like Lawrence Krauss states in a 'Universe from Nothing', that there is something in nothing which creates something. It would be wise if one such as the guilter would read and become informed before posting.

We've all heard the stereotypes about kids who grow up to be scientists: precocious, prodigious little children, lonely and isolated from their peers, who lock themselves in a room for several hours at a time doing experiments. By his own admission, Richard Dawkins was none of these things. When he lived in Africa as a boy, he was apparently more interested, for example, in playing with toy cars than watching a pride of lions devour its prey. However, he was-- and is-- a lover of words, and that is very obvious when reading any of his beautifully written twelve books.

Richard Dawkins's latest book, An Appetite for Wonder is an autobiography that details the first half of his life, from his childhood up until the publication of his first book, The Selfish Gene, in 1976. The first half of the memoir details his family history and his childhood. The second, less personal half is about his intellectual awakening in his late teens which leads to his passionate pursuit of studying biology at Oxford. The book concludes at the beginning of his scientific career, when he begins as a research scientist and eventually becomes a science writer; this is when his life takes a dramatic shift. We are left with a "cliffhanger" of sorts and find ourselves counting down the days until 2015 when Dawkins promises to release the second half of his memoir, provided he does not die before then. His mother is in her mid-90s and his father died at the age of 95. Obviously there are some robust genes in his family, so I don't think we should expect Dawkins to check out any time soon, provided he does not get hit by a church van (Google it if you don't get it).

What is really fascinating about An Appetite for Wonder are the philosophical questions that it postulates throughout. Yes, there are some endearing stories about Dawkins's early love of words; and yes there is a story about him, at the age of 19 months, telling other children that the Santa Claus who came to entertain them was actually a man named Sam, possibly foreshadowing Dawkins's journey into skepticism; yes there are some really interesting research projects that he did as a young man; and yes there are some interesting photographs to look at. But embedded within many of these stories is a continuing "what if?" question, and that is what I find the most fascinating. What if certain details in Dawkins's life had been changed? What if he had gone to different boarding schools than the ones he actually attended? What if he had not been born in Africa? What if he had not returned to England at age 8? What if he had been switched at birth and ben raised by different parents? What if he had not encountered certain friends and mentors during the course of his life? How did these people and experiences shape his personality and his professional life? More profoundly, what if a cannonball had hit his great-great grandfather's "family jewels" (yes, apparently almost happened)? Hell, how about any particular incident that did or did not happen over the course of history?

A lot of the questions about life and existence that Dawkins raises are ones that I have asked myself throughout my life, everything from the events that led to my conception to my first summer at overnight camp at age 14 which dramatically changed my life. The latter is too long of a story to go into here. However, in a very clear and simple example of an important event, my father told me that his mother left his father (my grandfather) and returned to him only because she found out she was pregnant with my aunt (my father's older sister). Had it not been for the social taboo of being a single mother, my father would not have been born, and neither would I. Not that the ends justify the means, but it is still interesting to think about. Dawkins-- and all of us-- owe our unlikely existence to a very precise string of events that occurred ever since the universe began. Change any one of these events, no matter how seemingly insignificant, and we-- Dawkins, you, me, or all of the above-- would not have been born. Perhaps it was not intentional, but it seems that the section Dawkins wrote about his early research into animal decision-making is an apt metaphor for this.

Rounding up my review, I want to commend Dawkins for his thoughts about the bullying he witnessed as a boy and how he regrets not intervening. I say this because I was bullied myself and I know that many people who were bullies or, in his case, who were bystanders are in denial or simply don't remember when confronted about these things later in life. It is not an easy thing to own up to. Overall, An Appetite for Wonder is an outstanding read by a truly talented and deep-thinking writer. As I say to my friends when I recommend a book, just read the damn thing.

As I’ve written in other reviews, a good autobiography should do two things: One, tell the reader something or she doesn't already know and two tell that something in an interesting manner.

Richard Dawkins is best known as the author of best-selling book “The Selfish Gene.” However, few readers would know anything else about him. Anything he tells the reader in his memoir would likely be something the reader doesn't know already. So Dawkins succeeds in telling the reader something new. However, in trying to tell his story in an interesting manner Dawkins fails miserably.

The poor storytelling begins in the first chapter. Dawkins naturally starts with his ancestry, but quickly digresses into how a cousin failed a test for to be bus driver. Then, in another point in the first chapter, he includes five stanzas of poem regarding a child who swallows a fruit pit.

The new few chapters regarding his early years growing up in Africa are fairly interesting, but with some editing, could have been made it more readable, if not dramatic.

The next chapters cover his upbringing in England. But again, there is a lack of focus. While Dawkins was educated at boarding school, he felt it necessary to include a poem written by one of his father’s employees on the family farm. The poem was completely extraneous to the main storyline. Later, to illustrate the importance of critical thinking over learning by rote, Dawkins tells a long story about a classmate being asked by a visitor to the classroom what kind animal eats a certain of plant. However, the student and the teacher don’t know the answer and there is a discussion of how the answer could be obtained. However, if the student (or teacher) had simply memorized what animal ate a particular plant, they would have had their answer. This was one circumstance where rote learning (what eats what) -- not critical thinking -- was needed.

The writing does not improve with Dawkins’ adult and professional life. He mentions how met his first wife, but his second wife is mentioned only in the briefest of passing. Of course, Dawkins is entitled to a measure of privacy, but in a memoir there is an expectation that some personal life will be revealed.

Dawkins however writes at length about his doctoral dissertation. A dissertation which included how the counting of hen pecks was achieved -- not exactly an exciting subject. Then, in one of the latter chapters he writes how he went about writing The Selfish Gene. Unless the circumstances are extremely unique, reading a book about how the author wrote another book is downright boring.

One final flaw, a flaw common to autobiographies, Dawkins engages in excessive “name dropping.” However, the practice is even worse here because the “name dropping” involved the names of other scientists, names, that with few exceptions, are meaningless to most readers.

Between the name dropping, extraneous poetry and recitation of the dreary aspects of data collection An Appetite for Wonder has little to offer the general reader. An Appetite for Wonder merits a very generous two star rating.

aAfW is a really interesting book. It does a great job planting professor Dawkins in a historical context and explaining what inspired him to go into the sciences. My favorite part is the author's explanation of how he came to be born in Africa and his similarities with his parents and uncles. It really humanizes him. Like his other books, this is clearly written and an absolute page turner and I cannot recommend it enough.

Not having read "The Selfish Gene" maybe I am missing something. Or maybe I just don't like prequels. In any case I found this tome repetitive and simplistic.
Not going to waste a lot of words, just going to ask for my money back

Dawkins is a good writer of popular science books and indeed is a very interesting figure but it seems he's not very interesting writer of other books then popular science. Although biography, it is more written like a popular science book, meaning that Dick tends to more explain background of genealogy of human genome then his own family. For instance I heard that his grand-grand-grand fathers fought in American Independence wars but he missed to mention them in his ancestors chapter. Or he's more interested in writing about boarding schools systems then his time there. I mean there were some fascinating stories and facts about his schooling years, especially when he said how some boys were used as slaves, but let's face it all male schools are pretty boring and so far only Stephen Fry, in his autobiography, managed to make it fun to read.
Rest of the book, after school years, were a total snooze for me. It got all to technical with ancient computers to whom Dawkins dedicated good portion of his life.
So my honest opinion is that this will only interest die hard Dawkins fans while the rest will be pretty bored. And even the title "An appetite for wonder" is a bit misleading because even Dawkins himself admitted he was not all that keen to science, missing many opportunities to attend science classes, until he came to the point he had to choose his career. It's not like, for instance, Darwin who collected bugs in his childhood to the point that in the absence of a jar he put them in his mouth.

And if he's gonna write a sequel, as he plans to do, then he needs to keep to the stories and anecdotes. Possibly even read "I Asimov" by Issac Asimov to see how even a scientist can write really funny and entertaining story about himself.

Another great book by Richard Dawkins. This book tells the story of how the man's complicated life view was formed. It's an appreciation of a man's love for the compassion and logic inherent in the scientific approach and the hope for mankind.