The public perception of evolution misses out on the depth of scientific work being done these days. Two more books that make modern evolutionary research accessible to the public:
1. Nick Lane's Power, Sex, Suicide: Mitochondria and the Meaning of Life - Covers the evolution of the eukaryotic cell, why it's such insanely chance event, why multicellular life depends on it, almost as an aside making a great argument that complex multicellular life is extremely rare in the universe. Also has a couple of fascinating chapters on how the interaction of the mitochondrial genome with the nuclear genome influenced development of sexes and sex.
2. Nick Lane's Life Ascending: The Ten Great Inventions of Evolution - Covers very different material and again all fucking fascinating. It's amazing to see how things like sight have evolved over and over and over because they're so fucking useful, and the genetic analysis that allows us to pick out each separate emergence of a feature.
1. Nick Lane's Power, Sex, Suicide: Mitochondria and the Meaning of Life - Covers the evolution of the eukaryotic cell, why it's such insanely chance event, why multicellular life depends on it, almost as an aside making a great argument that complex multicellular life is extremely rare in the universe. Also has a couple of fascinating chapters on how the interaction of the mitochondrial genome with the nuclear genome influenced development of sexes and sex.
http://amzn.com/0199205647
2. Nick Lane's Life Ascending: The Ten Great Inventions of Evolution - Covers very different material and again all fucking fascinating. It's amazing to see how things like sight have evolved over and over and over because they're so fucking useful, and the genetic analysis that allows us to pick out each separate emergence of a feature.
http://amzn.com/0393338665