Jerry Coyne's Book Recommendations (Updated for 2026)

1

The Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection: Or, the Preservation of Favored Races in the Struggle for Life

Charles Darwin

4.2

Darwin's theory of natural selection issued a profound challenge to orthodox thought and belief: no being or species has been specifically created; all are locked into a pitiless struggle for existence, with extinction looming for those not fitted for the task.

Yet The Origin of Species (1859) is also a humane and inspirational vision of ecological interrelatedness, revealing the complex mutual in

Recommended by Neil deGrasse Tyson, Mark Kurlansky, Adam Maloof, and 3 others.

Jerry Coyne

An educated person is someone who knows at least a little bit about the major disciplines in human endeavour. And in biology, this is what you need to know – not only historically but also contemporaneously, because Darwin was right, and still is right, about so many things. [source]

Neil deGrasse Tyson

Astrophysicist, Author & Science Communicator

Which books should be read by every single intelligent person on planet? … On the Origin of Species (Darwin) to learn of our kinship with all other life on Earth. If you read all of the above works you will glean profound insight into most of what has driven the history of the western world. [source]

Mark Kurlansky

It is one of the most important books written, and I always urge people to read it. [source]

2

The Varieties of Scientific Experience: A Personal View of the Search for God

Carl Sagan, Ann Druyan

4.5

On the 10th anniversary of his death, brilliant astrophysisist and Pulitzer Prize winner Carl Sagan's prescient exploration of the relationship between religion and science and his personal search for God.

Carl Sagan is considered one of the greatest scientific minds of our time. His remarkable ability to explain science in terms easily understandable to the layman in bestselling books such as Co

Recommended by Jerry Coyne.

Jerry Coyne

Of all these books, this is the one that resonates most for me. It was edited by his wife and published in 2006. It’s a distillation of the Gifford Lectures, a very prestigious series of lectures given in Scotland, endowed to give famous people a chance to talk about natural theology i.e. the relationship between science and religion. They’ve been going more than 100 years by now and they gave rise to William James’s The Varieties of Religious Experience, a very famous book. Sagan was a Gifford lecturer in 1985 and he titled his book after James’s. It’s a reflection, at the end of his life, on the dangers of superstition and of faith. It’s very well written and a lot more succinct than his more popular book, The Demon Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark which was a big bestseller in the US. That’s a bit bloated. This book is much more concise, much more tightly argued. It makes a good case for basing your actions on rationality rather than superstition and he talks about the dangers of not doing so from his experiences in fighting medical quackery, UFOs, the purported existence of canals on Mars etc. [source]

3

The Atheist's Guide to Reality: Enjoying Life without Illusions

Alex Rosenberg

3.8

We can’t avoid the persistent questions about the meaning of life—and the nature of reality. But science is the only means of answering them. So declares philosopher Alex Rosenberg in this bracing, surprisingly sanguine take on a world without god. The science that makes us nonbelievers, he demonstrates, tells us the nature of reality, the purpose of everything, the difference between right and wr

Recommended by Jerry Coyne.

Jerry Coyne

Like what? What he says about free will? [source]

Cover unavailable

4

God in the Age of Science?: A Critique of Religious Reason

Herman Philipse

4.1

God in the Age of Science? is a critical examination of strategies for the philosophical defence of religious belief. The main options may be presented as the end nodes of a decision tree for religious believers. The faithful can interpret a creedal statement (e.g. 'God exists') either as a truth claim, or otherwise. If it is a truth claim, they can either be warranted to endorse it without eviden

Recommended by Jerry Coyne.

Jerry Coyne

Theology is basically a warped form of philosophy. I’ll get in trouble for saying it, but it’s a fact. Theology is the kind of philosophy that’s applied to a non-existent object. So they use all the tools of philosophy. If you read sophisticated theology there’s even Bayesian analysis and mathematical logic in there. So it looks like philosophy but it all applies to a meaningless question involving a non-existent being. Philipse is a philosopher so he’s well equipped to deal with this. In particular, he goes after Richard Swinburne, who is probably the greatest living philosopher of religion and is a theist. [source]

5

Breaking the Spell: Religion as a Natural Phenomenon

Daniel C. Dennett

4.1

An innovative thinker tackles the controversial question of why we believe in God and how religion shapes our lives and our future.

For a growing number of people, there is nothing more important than religion. It is an integral part of their marriage, child rearing, and community. In this daring new book, distinguished philosopher Daniel C. Dennett takes a hard look at this phenomenon and asks why

Recommended by Jerry Coyne and Julian Baggini.

Jerry Coyne

He calls it Breaking the Spell for a reason. He thinks there is this sanctity about religion which prevents people from asking, “Where did it come from in the first place?” It’s a human construct, after all, it wasn’t given to humanity by God. It couldn’t have been, because we have thousands of different religions. So even religious people recognize the human contribution to religion. At the beginning of the book he says it could be real. We could be worshipping a real divine being. But we still want to know where this system of beliefs and practices and ceremonies came from — and it’s not off limits. That’s the importance to me of that book. [source]

Julian Baggini

If people want to read a New Atheist book, they should read this one. [source]

Cover unavailable

6

History of the Warfare of Science With Theology in Christendom

Andrew Dickson White

3.8

Recommended by Jerry Coyne.

Jerry Coyne

He wanted to model it on the European system, which by that time had become secular. Universities were originally, in the Middle Ages, religious institutions. Dickson White and Cornell agreed that they were going to make this university secular because only by insulating universities from the influence of religion could there be free inquiry. And he’s absolutely right about that. They put a clause in the statement of the founding of Cornell — which was given a grant by the state of New York — that there would be no test for religious belief for professors. You could be an atheist and still be a professor. That really caused a lot of problems, to the extent that they almost refused to let the university be set up. Some people even said you should be required to be a preacher in order to become a professor. Dickson White stood his ground and won, with the result that Cornell is a purely secular institution. It’s one of the few really high-class American universities that doesn’t have a school of theology. [source]

7

The Blind Watchmaker: Why the Evidence of Evolution Reveals a Universe Without Design

Richard Dawkins

4.3

*30th Anniversary Edition*

Cover note: Each copy of the anniversary edition of The Blind Watchmaker features a unique biomorph. No two covers are exactly alike.

Acclaimed as the most influential work on evolution written in the last hundred years, The Blind Watchmaker offers an inspiring and accessible introduction to one of the most important scientific discoveries of all time. A brilliant and con

Recommended by James Randi, Jerry Coyne, Kenneth Miller, and 1 others.

8

The Mismeasure of Man

Stephen Jay Gould

4.3

The definitive refutation to the argument of The Bell Curve.

How smart are you? If that question doesn't spark a dozen more questions in your mind (like "What do you mean by 'smart,'" "How do I measure it" and "Who's asking?"), then The Mismeasure of Man, Stephen Jay Gould's masterful demolition of the IQ industry, should be required reading. Gould's brilliant, funny, engaging prose dissects the mo

Recommended by Carol Dweck, Jerry Coyne, and Susan Gelman.

Jerry Coyne

He had this Marxist viewpoint towards biology which in the end made him almost reject natural selection. [source]

Carol Dweck

I was raised in the heyday of the IQ craze. My sixth grade teacher seated us around the room in IQ order and assigned all privileges on the basis of IQ. This book made me realise the effect it had on us and I saw that my work could play a role in bringing that era to a close. [source]

Susan Gelman

This is a classic book. It was published in 1981 and got a lot of attention when it came out. Gould just does this beautiful job of laying out the ‘biology as destiny’ idea – and then ripping it to shreds. [source]

9

Charles Darwin: Voyaging

Janet Browne

4.6

Few lives of great men offer so much interest--and so many mysteries--as the life of Charles Darwin, the greatest figure of nineteenth-century science, whose ideas are still inspiring discoveries and controversies more than a hundred years after his death. Yet only now, with the publication of Voyaging, the first of two volumes that will constitute the definitive biography, do we have a truly viv

Recommended by Jerry Coyne.

Jerry Coyne

This may be the best scientific biography I have ever read. It’s just absolutely engrossing. [source]

10

Evolution: What the Fossils Say and Why It Matters

Donald R. Prothero, Carl Buell

4.2

Donald R. Prothero's Evolution is an entertaining and rigorous history of the transitional forms and series found in the fossil record. Its engaging narrative of scientific discovery and well-grounded analysis has led to the book's widespread adoption in courses that teach the nature and value of fossil evidence for evolution. Evolution tackles systematics and cladistics, rock dating, neo-Darwinis

Recommended by Jerry Coyne.

Jerry Coyne

It is the one book that lays out in great detail some of the strongest evidence for evolution, which is the fossil record. [source]