• Why Did the Chicken Cross the World?

  • The Epic Saga of the Bird That Powers Civilization
  • By: Andrew Lawler
  • Narrated by: Dennis Holland
  • Length: 10 hrs and 47 mins
  • 4.3 out of 5 stars (157 ratings)

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Why Did the Chicken Cross the World?  By  cover art

Why Did the Chicken Cross the World?

By: Andrew Lawler
Narrated by: Dennis Holland
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Publisher's summary

From ancient empires to modern economics, veteran journalist Andrew Lawler delivers a sweeping history of the animal that has been most crucial to the spread of civilization across the globe: the chicken.

Queen Victoria was obsessed with it. Socrates' last words were about it. Charles Darwin and Louis Pasteur made their scientific breakthroughs using it. Catholic popes, African shamans, Chinese philosophers, and Muslim mystics praised it. Throughout the history of civilization, humans have embraced it in every form imaginable--as a messenger of the gods, a powerful sex symbol, a gambling aid, an emblem of resurrection, an all-purpose medicine, a handy research tool, an inspiration for bravery, the epitome of evil, and, of course, the star of the world's most famous joke.

In Why Did the Chicken Cross the World?, science writer Andrew Lawler takes us on an adventure from prehistory to the modern era with a fascinating account of the partnership between human and chicken (the most successful of all cross-species relationships). Beginning with the recent discovery in Montana that the chicken's unlikely ancestor is T. rex, this audiobook builds on Lawler's popular Smithsonian cover article, "How the Chicken Conquered the World", to track the chicken from its original domestication in the jungles of Southeast Asia some 10,000 years ago to postwar America, where it became the most engineered of animals, to the uncertain future of what is now humanity's single most important source of protein.

In a masterful combination of historical sleuthing and journalistic exploration on four continents, Lawler reframes the way we feel and think about our most important animal partner--and, by extension, all domesticated animals and even nature itself. Lawler's narrative reveals the secrets behind the chicken's transformation from a shy jungle bird into an animal of astonishing versatility, capable of serving our species' changing needs.

©2014 Andrew Lawler (P)2014 Audible Inc.
  • Unabridged Audiobook
  • Categories: History

What listeners say about Why Did the Chicken Cross the World?

Average customer ratings
Overall
  • 4.5 out of 5 stars
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  • 4 out of 5 stars
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  • Overall
    4 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    5 out of 5 stars

Never imagined the volume of bird trivia

This is a book about chicken. One would think that it is hard to write a book entirely about chicken. And one would think it is impossible to write such a book that is also interesting. Wrong, and wrong again. This book takes you on an unexpected, occasionally thrilling journey.

The reader will learn about:
- The number of chicken in the world: More than twice as many chickens as humans.
- The ancestry of chicken: They are related to dinosaurs and have been a part of our diet since at least 1500bc.
- The use of chicken in medicine: Squeezing it and drinking the resulting fluids cures a fewer (or so people thought.
- The morphology of chickens penises (or lack thereof).
- The role of chicken in ancient Greece: Socrates last words were about penises.
- Cockfighting: Still a very big sport in some countries.
- The intelligence of chicken (they are smarter than you think).
- And how much chicken we eat (crazy amounts).

If you are at all into chicken then this book is certain to be a smash hit. If you eat chicken occasionally and think chickens are ‘fine’, then this book will still be a hit. Even the reader who has never thought about this bird is likely to enjoy this book.

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8 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    3 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    3 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    3 out of 5 stars

Needs editorial help.

There is a lot of good information in this book, but it's a bit like chewing glass to read it. I take it in small doses on the way to work. The author spends too much time on anecdotal information, discussing his travels, the clothing people are wearing who he interviews, etc. to pad the book. I'd like to see a more meat in the book. Still, you'll probably learn a thing or two.

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5 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    2 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    3 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    2 out of 5 stars

I thought it would be interesting

This must be a book you like a lot or don’t like a lot. With machine-gun rapidity it hits you with a stream of factoids tied together by some relationship to a theme but without much continuity—nothing to make the reader interested in what’s coming next.

I’ve tried listening to several sections of the book and all are of a kind—one fact after another. You might say “What did this guy expect? It’s a book about chickens.” Maybe so, but I thought it would be interesting.

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5 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    5 out of 5 stars

five stars all the way

I love the narrator's voice and diction. I love the book itself FAR more than I anticipated. I'm listening to it for the second time now, and am just as enthralled as the first time--it helps in that regard that I have the basic memory loss of an adult American, but it's also so full of novel information that it would have been impossible to store it all in one go.

Fascinating, delightfully educating, well-rounded, humorous without being too goofy, well narrated...if you're into nonfiction and/or oddball history and facts, stop reading the reviews and invest in this one, already!

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2 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    4 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    3 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    4 out of 5 stars

Oddly organized, but stirring

The chapter organization of this book is pretty baffling, but the story it tells is moving, capturing the history and ethical dilemmas of the most common bird in the world.

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2 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    5 out of 5 stars

Highly recommended.

Lots of detail. Interesting background stories. It is important that we understand history, even if it is about chickens.

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2 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    5 out of 5 stars
  • No
  • 08-29-15

Valuable and Yet Undervalued

Would you consider the audio edition of Why Did the Chicken Cross the World? to be better than the print version?

I think the print version is better than the audio. There is so much information in the text it is easy to miss some by inattentiveness. In addition, print affords more ease in returning to earlier parts of the book to review earlier data. At the same time, Mr Holland's delivery is clear and well-modulated, so he is easy to listen to.

What was one of the most memorable moments of Why Did the Chicken Cross the World??

The discussion of American naturalists' efforts to secure, breed, and raise truly wild red jungle fowl. Lawyer's text documented the frustration, anxiety, and concern of the very few scientist-farmers of the early twentieth century who, unsupported by the federal government, took it upon themselves and their own wallets to protect the wild genome.

Have you listened to any of Dennis Holland’s other performances before? How does this one compare?

I have not, so I cannot comment concerning this question.

What’s the most interesting tidbit you’ve picked up from this book?

There are so many! But I never knew any chicken could fly. Having heard this, I Googled "red jungle fowl" and found YouTubes showing the same.

Any additional comments?

Who'd have thought a book about chickens could be interesting to a non-farmer? Yet as a consumer of eggs and lots of chicken, I am concerned about the deplorable conditions in which many chickens are raised in the US, and the loss of flavour caused by breeding for size.

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2 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    3 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    1 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    3 out of 5 stars

The voice is a no go.

I don’t think I can finish it. His voice has no soul. It’s so monotonous I’ll have to just buy the physical book and read it.

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1 person found this helpful

  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    5 out of 5 stars

Who would have thought

Well I was totally blown away by this little book and it's fascinating story of the simple chicken. Who would have thought that it could have had such an interesting history. A must read for anybody who needs a change from other subjects. This book explains the history of domesticating chickens to modern industrial chicken processing. Sounds sort of boring but it is the total opposite. Great read.

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1 person found this helpful

  • Overall
    3 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    3 out of 5 stars

good but a bit tedious at times

Make no mistake, there was a lot of information in this book that I was unaware of and I am pleased to have read it. But I though that the book dwelt too long on most of the stories, thus losing my interest from time to time. But three stars does mean 'pretty good,' and that is how I would rate it. The narration by Dennis Holland was particularly good and kept my interest.

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