ABSTRACT
Since The Selfish Gene was published in 1976, Richard Dawkins has written 12 books. Among these, only The Extended Phenotype continued the gene-centric project that Dawkins started in The Selfish Gene. The Selfish Gene is probably Dawkins's most influential academic work, taking "pride of place among his achievements" according to Alan Grafen and Mark Ridley in their 2008 intellectual biography of Dawkins. While The Selfish Gene was championed as a work of scientific seriousness that managed to communicate complex ideas to the general public, critics were less kind about The God Delusion, which some saw as less rigorous. When The Selfish Gene was published in 1976 it was welcomed by the academic community but was thought to be "a young man's book," in the words of Arthur Cain, a professor of zoology at the University of Liverpool who had been one of Dawkins's tutors at Oxford University.
