About the Author

MATT RIDLEY is the award-winning, bestselling author of The Evolution of Everything: How New Ideas Emerge, The Rational Optimist: How Prosperity Evolves, Genome: The Autobiography of a Species in 23 Chapters, and The Red Queen: Sex and the Evolution of Human Nature. His books have sold more than one million copies in thirty languages worldwide. He has written for the Wall Street Journal and the Times of London as well as the Economist. He is a member of the House of Lords and lives in Newcastle and London.

Reviews

"A compelling argument...a fascinating work...The way the book frames the argument is delightfully novel...Ridley has amassed such a weight of fascinating evidence and anecdote that the pages fly by."--The Times (Saturday Review)
"A highly intelligent and bracingly iconoclastic view of the world. It forces us to see life through new eyes."--New York Times Book Review
"An exceptional book: exceptionally easy to read, easy to understand, easy to appreciate...Of the many good general texts on the subject, THE EVOLUTION OF EVERYTHING emerges as the fittest to champion the case for the ubiquity of evolution."--Washington Times
"An ingenious study...fascinating...thought-provoking...difficult to put down."--Kirkus, starred review
"Building on the timeless insights of Lucretius, Ridley examines how civilization inexorably organizes itself. Wrong-headed social theories, he and Lucretius agree, just get in the way."--Stewart Brand, Author, Whole Earth Discipline
"Highly readable, invariably interesting...Ridley's laudable aim is to disenthrall us of our intuitive creationism and make us see evolution at work everywhere...Ridley succeeds in spades...He possesses the rare power to see the world in a different light - one made not by great men or women but by undirected, incremental change."--New Scientist
"Impressive...Readers of evolutionary theory, sociology, history, anthropology and philosophy shall be highly entertained by this thought-provoking read."--Library Journal
"Ridley is a provocative, occasionally pugnacious writer and his book is intriguing and artfully argued."--London Sunday Times
"Ridley shows how hard it has been for even the most definite evolutionists to fully abandon the notion of a guiding intelligence...Yet that is what the hard evidence...that Ridley adduces in every chapter compels us all to do."--Booklist (starred review)
"This penetrating book is Mr. Ridley's best and most important work to date...there is something profoundly democratic and egalitarian-even anti-elitist-in this bottom-up approach: Everyone can have a role in bringing about change."--Wall Street Journal