How did the replication bomb we call ”life” begin and where in the world, or rather, in the universe, is it heading? Writing with characteristic wit and an ability to clarify complex phenomena (the New York Times described his style as ”the sort of science writing that makes the reader feel like a genius”), Richard Dawkins confronts this ancient mystery.
The No.1 SUNDAY TIMES bestseller. A fascinating explanation of how evolution works, from bestselling author of THE GOD DELUSION 'Dawkins is a brilliant communicator' SUNDAY TELEGRAPH 'A model of simplicity and power' Douglas Adams The river of Dawkins's title is a river of DNA, flowing through time from the beginning of life on earth to the present - and onwards. Dawkins explains that DNA must be thought of as the most sophisticated information system imaginable: 'Life is just bytes and bytes of information,' he writes. Using this perspective, he describes the mechanisms by which evolution has taken place, gradually but inexorably, over a period of three thousand million years. It is the story of how evolution happens, rather than a narrative of what has actually happened in evolution. He discusses current views on the process of human evolution, including the idea that we all trace back to a comparatively recent African 'Eve', and speculates that the 'information explosion' that was unleashed on Earth when DNA came into being has almost certainly happened in other places in the universe.
On a night of torrential rain, a warrior appears near the Colombia River, where the Chinook people thrived before the hydroelectric dams came and changed their entire way of life. He has come to reclaim the river, to return it to its original majesty. Soon after, government employees are found murdered with elaborate harpoons. As the body count grows, Francine Smohalla, a government marine biologist of Chinook and white descent, embarks on her own investigation of the bizarre murders. As she desperately tries to find the killer and prevent any other murders, she finds herself spinning in the convergence of ethnic hatreds between Indians and whites, an unlikely relationship with a kindred spirit whose troubled life has led him to contemplate terrorism and apocalypse, an ancient prophecy about the return of her beloved salmon, and the giant dams on the Columbia that loom large and as seemingly immovable as the mountains themselves. A River Out of Eden is a gripping literary thriller straight from today’s headlines set against the uniquely American contradictions of the Pacific Northwest.
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