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(Taken from back of book)The Selfish Gene causes a wave of excitement among biologists and the general public when it was first published in 1976.  Its vivid rendering of a gene’s eye view of life, in lucid prose, gathered together the strands of thought about the nature of natural selection into a conceptual framework with far-reaching implications for our understanding of evolution.(From book review published in 30th anniversary edition)The argument of this book is that we, and all other animals, are machines created by our genes… I shall argue that a predominant quality to be expected in a successful gene is ruthless selfishness.  This gene selfishness will usually give rise to selfishness in individual behaviour.  However, as we can see, there are special circumstances in which a gene can achieve its own selfish goals best by fostering a limited form of altruism at the level of individual animals.  ‘Special’ and ‘limited’ are important words in the last sentence.  Much as we might wish to believe otherwise, universal love and the welfare of the species as a whole are concepts which simply do not make evolutionary sense. — Peter MedawarThis edition of the book contains the original foreword published in the 1st edition and not found in the 2nd, an author’s note, and extracts from numerous reviews of the book.  Published in 2006.