The Dragons of Eden

Speculations on the Evolution of Human Intelligence

By: Carl Sagan

Narrated by: JD Jackson, Ann Druyan

Length: 6 hrs and 41 mins

Publisher's summary

The Pulitzer Prize Winner

Dr. Carl Sagan takes us on a great adventure, offering his vivid and startling insight into the brain of man and beast, the origin of human intelligence, the function of our most haunting legends - and their amazing links to recent discoveries.

©1977 Carl Sagan (P)2017 Brilliance Audio, all rights reserved.

Critic reviews

"A history of the human brain from the big bang, fifteen billion years ago, to the day before yesterday . . . . It's a delight." --The New York Times

“How can I persuade every intelligent person to read this important and elegant book? . . . He talks about all kinds of things: the why of the pain of human childbirth . . . the reason for sleeping and dreaming . . . chimpanzees taught to communicate in deaf and dumb language . . . the definition of death . . . cloning . . . computers . . . intelligent life on other planets. . . . Fascinating . . . delightful.” --The Boston Globe

“In some lost Eden where dragons ruled, the foundations of our intelligence were laid. . . . Carl Sagan takes us on a guided tour of that lost land. . . . Fascinating . . . entertaining . . . masterful.” --St. Louis Post-Dispatch

Carl Sagan is my only god

Great for students of all sciences. I really loved this book as a first year student of biology. It was helpful in solidifying material and gaining further insight to it.

Great book.

I learned a lot about things I didn’t know before. The last hour-ish felt a little like a Stephen King novel but nonetheless I enjoyed the other 8 or so hours. “hiyo silver, away!” I can picture hell being something like having a loudspeaker screaming this phrase to torture me for an eternity. Not that I believe in such a place.

Another informative book!

Great book and a lot of interesting topics. given that this was written 40 years ago, some of the information is outdated, but I think there are still some universal concepts worth learning about

The narrator is a pretty convincing Sagan

Excellent. I gave 4 stars for story as it tends to be overly technical at times. other than that, a very relaxing and enlightening read.

Non-fiction so much more intriguing

To gather knowledge one has to take the past, the present and the future into consideration to form one’s opinion. I for one find that the more non-fiction I read I discover more fantastical, mysterious, dramatic and intriguing stories any mind could ever come up with.

Interesting but dated

Interesting view from 1977. I think Sagan would have wanted to update it. There were many things where time has changed his statements dramatically. His accounts of computers look primitive now. And his review of the causes of the demise of the dinosaurs cover many possibilities it not the one that is currently the consensus view.

Nicely Presented, Still Relevant, Repetitive

I enjoyed several of Sagan's other books so I decided to try this one. Surprisingly. 40 years later, much of his ideas are still relevant. My only criticism is that his initial observations were repeated multiple times with only slight permutations.

Thought provoking but slightly misleading

The word "speculations" is indeed in the title yet it feels like it would also be easy to miss that point while reading this. Dragons of Eden is thought provoking and well researched but a great deal of it is in fact speculation and not hard science.

That said, Sagan presents in as approachable a way as is possible brain anatomy and cross-disciplinary research then extrapolates well into the realm of philosophy, especially phil. of ethics. In light of this, it's difficult to know how to evaluate this. As science? Philosophy? Psychology? It's a bit of all of these things but not extensive in any of them. In the end you're left with a FEELING of awe but not a great deal more actual knowledge.

Broad-reaching and thought-provoking

While some of the technical information of this book is apparently outdated, it was mentally stimulating and provided some very interesting ideas to chew on for a layman such as myself.

Wonderfully thought provoking journey of the mind!

Carl Sagan is one of the truly beautiful minds of our age. As always, he provides a very insightful take on a wide variety of science, technology and morality topics so integral to our times. He makes intelligible what many would label "garble" offering a wide array of differing perspectives for our consideration.