The Greatest Show on Earth

And I'm not talking Ringling Brothers. No. Richard Dawkins' new book, The Greatest Show on Earth: The Evidence for Evolution, is being released on 22 September. But you don't have to wait until then to read it. The Times (that's the London Times, not the New York Times) is serializing it.

You read about it at Science Central about it, or you can head straight to the Times and start reading it right now. He starts by describing the plight that biology teachers all too frequently face:

The plight of many science teachers today is not less dire. When they attempt to expound the central and guiding principle of biology; when they honestly place the living world in its historical context -- which means evolution; when they explore and explain the very nature of life itself, they are harried and stymied, hassled and bullied, even threatened with loss of their jobs. At the very least their time is wasted at every turn. They are likely to receive menacing letters from parents and have to endure the sarcastic smirks and close-folded arms of brainwashed children. They are supplied with state-approved textbooks that have had the word "evolution" systematically expunged, or bowdlerized into "change over time".

Head over and take a look. Dawkins can be infuriating, but he is (almost) always worth reading.