DAWKINS' latest bestseller takes its title from Keats's criticisms of Newton's experiments with light and complaints that the scientist was unweaving the rainbow and destroying its poetry and mystery. Of course Dawkins is going to side with Newton on this one and defend the beauty, poetry and wonder inherent in scientific discovery, but he does so in a way that gives almost as much space to the great romantic poets. As Dawkins unweaves the intricacies of the electromagnetic spectrum, he knits the strands back together, lacing them with dozens of quotes from Dickinson, Keats, Shakespeare and Lamb. It makes for a most pleasing and attractive whole that is at once readable and worth reading. Dawkins does unfortunately succumb to a joust with his great rival Stephen Jay Gould with no great benefit to the book. But forget the row, and thrill instead in the adventure of discovery that Dawkins describes so very well.
