Looking back on his formative years, the author of The God Delusion paints a memorable portrait of his idyllic childhood in colonial Africa, and vividly recounts his stint studying zoology at 1960s Oxford. Praised by NPR as "funny and modest, absorbing and playful," this compelling memoir follows Richard Dawkins as he is molded by a unique educational system that encourages young people to become scholars by posing rigorous questions and seeking answers in the latest research. As Dawkins explains here, a 1973 strike caused prolonged electricity cuts, and he was forced to pause his computer-based research; provoked by a widespread misunderstanding of natural selection, he instead began to write the future bestseller The Selfish Gene.