Richard Dawkins, A Devil’s Chaplain

If the Comic Book Guy from The Simpsons picked up a genie’s lamp with three wishes, he might turn himself into Richard Dawkins: Celebrity scientist, bestselling Oxford evolutionist and atheist, inventor of the concept of memes, close personal friend of author Douglas Adams and husband of an ex-Doctor Who actress. He is one highly evolved geek. This collection of short essays is often insightful, but as a grab bag of book reviews, opinion pieces, and other miscellany, it’s not the best introduction to his work—begin with The Blind Watchmaker instead. Good moments here include his jabs at the pretensions of academic postmodernism, eulogies for the late Adams, and a few selections from Dawkins’s longtime battles with colleague Stephen Jay Gould. Dawkins has his faults—the harshness of his antireligious stance is offputting to some, and his prose can be somewhat stiff. But he’s earned his position as our century’s equivalent of “Darwin’s Bulldog” Thomas Henry Huxley for his take-no-prisoners defense of science against the forces of ignorance.