I had a sudden drop in blood pressure when I checked out the new issue of Nature today. Evolutionary biologist Laurence Hurst wrote a two-book review: Richard Dawkins’s The Greatest Show on Earth, and my own The Tangled Bank. I revived when I saw that my book held up under Hurst’s comparison: “The book is billed as the first textbook on evolution for the general reader, and in that framework, it excels.”

Hurst used his review to pose an interesting question. He contrasts my style, which he describes as “authoritative and easy to read” with that of Dawkins, who “emerges like a prize-fighter, knocking out of the ring all objections.” Hurst then asks, “So which is the better