Celebrating 50 years with a new anniversary edition, this critically acclaimed international bestseller has sold millions of copies and been translated into over 30 languages. Among the most influential and enduring science books of all time, The Selfish Gene is a classic in every sense of the word. Originally published in 1976, the book soon galvanized the biology community and fascinated a broad general readership. Professor Dawkins's gene's-eye view of evolution introduced a completely novel way of looking at survival. Fifty years later, The Selfish Gene still sparks fascination and debate among scientists and science-enthusiasts alike, inspiring new directions in research and fresh generations of young life scientists. First-time and returning readers will marvel at the timelessness and universality of this monumental work. In a new epilogue to the 50th anniversary edition, Professor Dawkins reflects on his signature publication and its enduring relevance and appeal. This edition also contains a new appendix, which sheds historical and personal light on the perpetual relevance of the 'selfish gene'.

Dawkins's prose is lucid and powerful, his argument difficult to contend ... The Selfish Gene has attained its own literary and scientific immortality: as long as we study life, it will be read. * Adam Rutherford, The Observer *
highly readable and entertaining ... exhilarating gene's-eye-view of life * Robert McCrum, The Observer *
Books about science tend to fall into two categories: those that explain it to lay people in the hope of cultivating a wide readership, and those that try to persuade fellow scientists to support a new theory, usually with equations. Books that achieve both changing science and reaching the public are rare. Charles Darwin's On the Origin of Species (1859) was one. The Selfish Gene by Richard Dawkins is another. From the moment of its publication 40 years ago, it has been a sparkling best-seller and a scientific game-changer * Matt Ridley, Nature *
Richard Dawkins' magnificent introduction to the world of popular science writing ... Punchy, elegant, self-righteous, devotional (at least in a Darwinian way), it showed that genetics was absorbing, challenging and important * Nick Spencer, The Tablet *

Professor Richard Dawkins was the first holder of the Charles Simonyi Chair of the Public Understanding of Science at Oxford, a position he held from 1995 until 2008, and is now Emeritus Fellow of New College, Oxford. His bestselling books include The Extended Phenotype (1982) and its sequel The Blind Watchmaker (1986), River Out of Eden (1995), Climbing Mount Improbable (1996), Unweaving the Rainbow (1998), A Devil's Chaplain (2004), The Ancestor's Tale (2004), The God Delusion (2007), The Magic of Reality (2011), and The Genetic Book of the Dead (2024). He has won numerous literary and scientific awards, including the 1987 Royal Society of Literature Award, the 1990 Michael Faraday Award of the Royal Society, the 1994 Nakayama Prize for Human Science, the 1997 International Cosmos Prize, and the Nierenberg Prize for Science in the Public Interest in 2009.