If you haven’t already seen this, the New York Times recently featured famed evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins in its “Profiles in Science” series. The result is a surprisingly fair-minded article and video interview. I say fair-minded not because the Times is known for biased reporting, but because in my experience, Dawkins rarely gets a fair shake in the American media. He has here.

If you’re looking for some reading this weekend, consider adding this to your list:

OXFORD, England — You walk out of a soft-falling rain into the living room of an Oxford don, with great walls of books, handsome art and, on the far side of the room, graceful windows onto a luxuriant garden.

Does this man, arguably the world’s most influential evolutionary biologist, spend most of his time here or in the field? Prof. Richard Dawkins smiles faintly. He did not find fame spending dusty days picking at shale in search of ancient trilobites. Nor has he traipsed the African bush charting the sex life of wildebeests.

He gets little charge from such exertions.

“My interest in biology was pretty much always on the philosophical side,” he says, listing the essential questions that drive him. “Why do we exist, why are we here, what is it all about?”