An Appetite for Wonder

An Appetite for Wonder:
The Making of a Scientist

US edition cover
Author Richard Dawkins
Country United Kingdom
Language English
Subject Memoir
Publisher Ecco Press
Publication date
 12 September 2013 (United Kindom and United States)
Media type Print (hardcover)
Pages 320
ISBN 978-0-062-22579-5
Preceded by The Magic of Reality: How We Know What's Really True
Followed by Brief Candle in the Dark: My Life in Science

An Appetite for Wonder: The Making of a Scientist is the first volume of the autobiographical memoir by British evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins. The hardcover version of the book was published in both the United Kingdom and the United States on 12 September 2013, and covers Dawkins's childhood, youth, studies and early career up to the writing of The Selfish Gene. A second volume, Brief Candle in the Dark: My Life in Science, covering the remaining part of his life, was released in September 2015.[1][2]

Reviews

Early reviews were mixed. Marek Kohn of The Independent newspaper described it as warm and generous,[3] while Eric Liebetrau of the Boston Globe [4] states the book's title is "ultimately a misnomer, as much of the narrative is a slog." The satirical magazine Private Eye describes it as "profoundly irksome...colourless....The self-absorption is extraordinary." Instead of providing a reflective memoir Dawkins "huffs and harangues." [5] Leah Libresco, writing for First Things, finds the book "invites comparisons with C. S. Lewis’ Surprised by Joy. Both are memoirs by thinkers who seemed a little surprised to end up as apologists, much less as writers whom growing numbers would credit with their conversion or de-conversion."[6]

In a review described in First Things as "withering,"[7] philosopher John Gray, writing in The New Republic, criticized the book's "tone of indulgent superiority" and "Dawkins' inveterate literal-mindedness," and commented that Dawkins "writes well – fluently, vividly, and at times with considerable power. But the ideas and the arguments that he presents are in no sense novel or original, and he seems unaware of the critiques of positivism that appeared in its Victorian heyday."[8]

In The Independent, Brandon Robshaw describes the book as "[...] a generous appreciation and admiration of the qualities of others, as well as a transparent love of life, literature – and science".[9]

Notes and references

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