Refreshingly optimistic

An idea that is changing the world . . . the global economy is being remade before our eyes

A well-written and riveting read 9/10

Heartwarming

One of the best popular science books I have ever read

Wonderful stuff, the most thoughtful pop science book of the last few years ... erudite, elegant and thoughtfully constructed

I read it in an evening, with a sense of increasing excitement, and then vertigo, and finally a sort of stunned awe

For many years, I've secretly longed for someone to take me by the hand and walk me through time and space - someone who would marvel with me at every strange thing we encountered, and pepper his scientific discourse with lines of poetry. Thank goodness Christopher Potter has come along at last

A marvelously capacious book that will attract serious readers everywhere

Any reader who has avoided science for fear of being overwhelmed will find a friendly guide in Potter ... This clear and smoothly written look at the mind-boggling history of everything is both informative and provocative

This Portable History of the Universe is awe-inspiring in its reach. It ranges easily over millions of miles and takes in billions of centuries at a stroke, yet at the same time it's somehow intimate and conversational in its manner. The engaging medium is the message, perhaps: to contemplate the universe, suggests Potter, is "to find ourselves at two poles at the same time: we are uniquely special and we are insignificant". Playing both poles against the middle with extraordinary aplomb, his book opens up to us the vastness of the cosmos

Less folksy and biographical than Bill Bryson, less zany than a Bluffer's Guide. But many a bang for your buck, washed down with quotations from the greats ... Potter has an engaging style

With marvellous clarity, compassion, erudition, humour and open-mindedness, Potter blasts us through the vast vacuum of space

Brimming with excitement . . . This is a rewarding tale of courage, determination, and the possibilities of science.

Dawkins emerges like a prize-fighter, knocking out of the ring all objections

Most importantly his writing radiates an intense sense of fascination. He is a great explainer, taking complex biological processes and making them accessible

If you want to understand evolution, I doubt there are many better at explaining it to laymen than Dawkins... A writer who is red in tooth and pen, his opponents don't stand a chance

An accessible, colourful and beautifully detailed look at many scientific wonders - whether it's the great variety of dogs or the sex life of orchids - and a great primer for those coming fresh to the subject

Richard Dawkin's new book... gives the fact-rejecters their just deserts

The book is full of evidence, some familiar and some new. Its case is presented in a manner succinct, clear and sometimes vivid

No other book currently available approaches Dawkin's comprehensive yet accessible treatment of the extraordinarily diverse and massive body of data that drives ineluctably to the same conclusion

The Greatest Show on Earth is a lucid, thorough and often exciting survey of evolution and takes in rats' teeth, dogs, bacteria, the so-called missing link, crustaceans, giraffe anatomy, hummingbirds, chimpanzees, enzymes - you name it. It is informed in nearly every paragraph by Mr. Dawkins's irrepressible enthusiasm

The Greatest Show on Earth... is essential reading. I would currently rate it... as the best overall book on the evidence for Evolution

This is a magnificent book of wonderstanding: Richard Dawkins combines an artist's wonder at the virtuosity of nature with a scientist's understanding of how it comes to be