Two Great Books on Evolution

I've been reading a lot lately, enjoying the fruits of not having to work 2 jobs and having a library card. Here are 2 must-reads:

Sean Carroll's Endless Forms Most Beautiful: The New Science of Evo Devo. For those of you not familiar with the term, evo devo is short for evolutionary developmental biology. It's the study of the changes in the genetic switches in development in order to understand how different species evolved. It is the "hot" growing field in biology, and it is providing some of the most robust research into not just when, but how speciation has occured.

This book is split into 2 parts. The first explains the history and science of developmental biology. I admittedly did not care much for the developmental biology course I took at U of A, but the author keeps it interesting. The subject matter is complicated; and even though Sean tries to simplify it, in the end those without biology degrees will probably end up slightly confused by it. But learning it is essential for understanding part 2: evo devo. And that part will blow your mind. Once you know the current understanding of how organisms are constructed, understanding how minor genetic changes can result in selectable differences in offspring is obvious. And the accumulation of those successful changes over millions of years...

The second book is Monkey Girl by Edward Humes. I actually bought this one, so it's available on loan. The topic: Dover, PA, and the Kitzmiller trial. The shenanigans that went on in the Dover Board of Education were so shameful, disgusting, and anti-American (yeah, I said it), that you will not be able to put the damn book down. Split into 3 parts, it covers Dover pre-trial, the history of evolution and creationism, and the Dover trial and aftermath. The detailed descriptions of the "characters" behind the decision to include ID in the science curriculum, and of the appalled teachers, parents, and students who stood against them, is excellent. Your mouth will fall to the floor many times, like when one of the school board members, Angie Yingling, described her understanding of ID (nonexistent) and why she didn't listen to the science teachers on the subject (when she was in school, board-member Yingling didn't like the head of the science teachers, so she didn't listen to that teacher decades later when she explained why ID wasn't science to the board. The teacher "bitched" too much.).

But the book has a major shortcomings. The editor was crap and the book should have been vetted more. All kinds of major and minor errors from spelling and grammar ("H" instead of "He" and "Robert" rather than "Richard Dawkins" stand out), to layout (I despise it when editors needlessly squinch words up [called kerning], causing sentences to end like this: end.Beginning. Move a word down a line, jackass.), to some rather silly technical mistakes (Bill O'Reilly is on Fox News, not CNN as the book states). They take away from the real power of the book by making its author look amateurish and the publication look like it's from some 3rd-rate Christer schlock mill (instead of from HarperCollins).

Still, most of the information is trustworthy (I followed the trial pretty closely as it unfolded, so I remember much of it). The science is dead-on, as is the description of ID. But the trial part...oh my, how tasty. It's a veritable religious nut pate, with layer after rich layer of creationist lies, obfuscations, and humiliating public refutations. Those ID advocates that could ran away, fast. That any of them thought they would make it out of that trial vindicated shows the true power of religion to delude its believers.

Other books on the trial are coming out. I'll be reading them as well, as it will be fun to compare and contrast.