Dawkins first became famous for his book, The Selfish Gene, which showed how life is just a way for genes to propagate themselves. He then had to quickly respond to various right wing attempts to paint this book as a justification for basing our political and economic systems on selfishness.He continues to write beautiful books about evolution and biology, but he has become famous to a whole new audience as one of the leading voices calling for ridding ourselves of superstition and religion. You can check out video.google.com for a number of talks, documentaries and debates he has been involved in.
I have to admit I have been exposed to him via his talks and documentaries rather than his books, but I figure I'm enough of a heavily athiest leaning agnostic (a teapot agnostic as Bertrand Russell called himself) without needing to become more radical. I guess as a clever woman once said to me, I continue to try to walk the fine line between the positive value of religious tolerance and resistance to influence these cobwebs of history have over what claims to be a modern world.