Ancestor's Tale

The Ancestor's Tale: A Pilgrimage to the Dawn of Evolution.
Richard Dawkins. 2004. Houghton Mifflin Company, Boston and New York. 673 pp., hardbound.

The Ancestor's Tale has all the makings of a "trophy book." Written by renowned evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins, who bears the lofty title of Charles Simonyi Professor of the Public Understanding of Science at Oxford University, it is a must-buy for people aspiring to be—and appearing to be—intellectually au courant. However, at 673 pages, it is likely to be guiltily shelved, unread, after an appropriately long stint on the coffee table. "After all," people are wont to think about a book such as this, "I'm busy, and I did read all the reviews."
—Susan Lumpkin
http://nationalzoo.si.edu/Publications/ZooGoer/2005/2/books34_2.cfm