The Selfish Gene
by Richard Dawkins
Argues that natural selection is best understood as acting on genes rather than individuals or groups, with organisms as vehicles built to propagate them. Introduces the meme, and explains altruism, kin selection and evolutionarily stable strategies through game theory.
More resources on Evolution
PBS Eons
PBS series on the history of life across deep time, from Cambrian animals to hominin origins. Each episode reconstructs extinct organisms and vanished ecosystems from fossil and geological evidence, explaining how researchers arrived at the interpretation.
On the Origin of Species
Darwin's 1859 argument that species change through descent with modification under natural selection, built from breeding, biogeography, and fossil evidence. Darwin Online hosts the full text of all six editions alongside his other published works and manuscripts.
Introduction to Genetics and Evolution
Introduction to Genetics and Evolution is a college-level class being offered simultaneously to new students at Duke University. The course gives interested people a very basic overview of some principles behind these very fundamental areas of biology. We often hear about new "genome sequences," commercial kits that can tell you about your ancestry (including pre-human) from your DNA or disease predispositions, debates about the truth of evolution, why animals behave the way they do, and how people found "genetic evidence for natural selection." This course provides the basic biology you need to understand all of these issues better, tries to clarify some misconceptions, and tries to prepare students for future, more advanced coursework in Biology (and especially evolutionary genetics). No prior coursework is assumed.
evolution.berkeley.edu
Understanding Evolution is a free, educator-friendly resource from UC Berkeley that explains how evolution works and the evidence supporting it. It features accessible articles, interactive activities, and classroom-ready materials on topics like natural selection, fossils and genetics, speciation, and human evolution.
talkorigins.org
TalkOrigins.org is a comprehensive resource about evolution and the origins of life, featuring FAQs, essays, and rebuttals to common creationist claims with extensive references. It covers topics from evolution and the fossil record to dating methods and cosmology.
Vertebrate Palaeontology (5th Edition)
Standard vertebrate palaeontology textbook tracing early fish through mammals across 500 million years, with chapters on key transitions such as terrestrialization, flight, and endothermy, plus mass extinctions, phylogenetic methods, and macroevolutionary analysis. Fifth edition, 688 pages. The canonical reference for the vertebrate half of the field, and the natural next step after Prothero for anyone going deeper into tetrapod evolution.