Mendel's Demon remains, unchallenged, my most favourite evolution book. Here's the gist. One day, you decide to get some extra housework done and clone(copy) yourself. That clone decides he'd rather be at the bar and makes a clone of himself, a clone of a clone if you will, who promptly decides that that is so unfair and makes a copy of himself, a clone of a clone of a clone, and so on and so forth. However, every time a clone makes a copy of himself, there is a chance that a piece of DNA is miscopied. Of course, every time he clones himself, this copy error is past down to the next clone, who could introduce a new copy error, so now culminatively two or three errors are now being past down to the next clone. Fast forward couple of thousand generations, and you will have clones with hundred's of thousands of copy errors in their DNA, and looking like horribly mishapen monster clones, who would exact their revenge on the clones at the pub if they could still move or breathe properly.
Mendel's Demon guides us through the various novel ways evolution has come up to correct this problem, the most novel way being the most familiar, through sex. Yay sex! What not to like about this book? ( )