At Powell's, we feel the holidays are the perfect time to share our love of books with those close to us. For this special blog series, we reached out to authors featured in our Holiday Gift Guide to learn about their own experiences with book giving during this bountiful time of year.Today's featured giver is Edward O. Wilson, author of The Meaning of Human Existence.
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What book are you giving to friends and family this holiday season and why?
J. Craig Venter's Life at the Speed of Light. The ultimate discipline of the biological sciences will be synthetic biology, the radical modification and creation of new forms of life. This book is by one of the pioneers of the field and is clearly and cogently written.
What's the best book you've received as a gift?
As an 18-year-old sophomore at the University of Alabama, it was Ernst Mayr's Systematics and the Origin of Species from the Viewpoint of a Zoologist, in which I learned about evolution.
What's the strangest book you've received as a gift?
Godel, Escher, Bach, a part of which was sent to me by Douglas Hofstadter on a single roll of computer readout in 1979. The next year it won a Pulitzer.
What books are you planning on reading over the holidays?
Arrival City by Doug Saunders and Countdown by Alan Weisman.
What type of book makes the best cold-weather reading?
Technical and popular books on tropical forests!
Author photo by Jerry Bauer.