Childhood, Boyhood, Truth: From an African Youth to the Selfish Gene

Here, for the first time is an intimate look into the childhood and intellectual development of the world's most famous atheist and evolutionary biologist, Richard Dawkins, "one of the most outstanding intelligences in modern science." (Evening Standard) and "one of the greatest nonfiction writers alive today" (Steven Pinker)

Richard Dawkins' first book, The Selfish Gene, called "the best work of popular science ever written" by the New York Review of Books, caused a seismic shift in the study of biology by proffering the gene-centred view of evolution. This book completely transformed the way we think about genes and evolution and, since its publication in 1976, it has sold more than a million copies around the world. It was in this book that Dawkins coined the term "meme," a unit of cultural evolution, which has itself become a mainstay in contemporary culture.

Then in 2006, Dawkins transformed the world's cultural and intellectual landscape again with The God Delusion, a takedown of religious faith, which has also sold more than a million copies around the world-nearly one million in the United States alone and his name became a byword for ruthless skepticism and "brilliant, impassioned, articulate, impolite" debate-in the words of the San Francisco Chronicle.

This memoir marks the first time he's given his passionate following real insight into his own evolution as a man and as a thinker. From his beginnings in colonial Kenya to his intellectual awakening at Oxford, Dawkins shares his path to the creation of The Selfish Gene, one of the most important books of the last century.