Unweaving the rainbow (Penguin Books)

From the bestselling author of "The God Delusion", Richard Dawkins' "Unweaving the Rainbow" explores the most important and compelling topics in modern science, and our appetite for wonder.

Keats accused Newton of destroying the poetry of the rainbow by explaining the origin of its colours, thus dispelling its mystery. In this illuminating and provocative book, Richard Dawkins argues that Keats could not have been more mistaken and shows how an understanding of science in fact inspires the human imagination and enhances our wonder of the world.

"Beautifully written and full of interesting, original ideas. Essential reading". ("The Times"). "A brilliant assertion of the wonder and excitement of real, tough, grown-up science".

(A.S. Byatt). "The way Dawkins writes about science is not just a brain-tonic. It is more like an extended stay on a brain health-farm...you come out feeling lean, tuned and enormously more intelligent".

("Sunday Times"). "For Dawkins there is more poetry, not less, in the rainbow because of Newton...warming to his theme, he weaves rainbows of wonder from other provinces of science and then unleashes his fury on those who accuse scientists like him of being unimaginative for not believing in horoscopes, telepathy, ghosts and gods".(Matt Ridley).

"Brilliantly entertaining and stimulating". ("Observer"). Richard Dawkins is a Fellow of both the Royal Society and the Royal Society of Literature, and Vice President of the British Humanist Association.

He was first catapulted to fame with The Selfish Gene, which he followed with a string of bestselling books: "The Extended Phenotype", "The Blind Watchmaker", "River Out of Eden", "Unweaving the Rainbow", and an impassioned defence of atheism, "The God Delusion".