The Selfish Gene

By: Richard Dawkins

Narrated by: Richard Dawkins, Lalla Ward

Length: 16 hrs and 12 mins

Publisher's summary

Richard Dawkins' brilliant reformulation of the theory of natural selection has the rare distinction of having provoked as much excitement and interest outside the scientific community as within it. His theories have helped change the whole nature of the study of social biology, and have forced thousands to rethink their beliefs about life.

In his internationally best-selling, now classic, volume, The Selfish Gene, Dawkins explains how the selfish gene can also be a subtle gene. The world of the selfish gene revolves around savage competition, ruthless exploitation, and deceit, and yet, Dawkins argues, acts of apparent altruism do exist in nature. Bees, for example, will commit suicide when they sting to protect the hive, and birds will risk their lives to warn the flock of an approaching hawk.

©1989 Richard Dawkins (P)2011 Audible, Inc.

Critic reviews

"Dawkins first book, The Selfish Gene, was a smash hit.... Best of all, Dawkins laid out this biology - some of it truly subtle - in stunningly lucid prose. (It is, in my view, the best work of popular science ever written.)" (H. Allen Orr, Professor of Biology, University of Rochester, in The New York Review of Books)

Replication, co-operation & iteration explains it all

The ending totally blew me away, what a great listen it was.
As a Scrum Master who is coaching teams in iterative improvements via co-operation, this book explained me better why iteration in small time-boxes is the key to improvement and progress. Simply that is how our genes have evolved

Must read

Mind blowing book, just finished it and plan to re-listen this week. There's just so much new information to process. Wonderful narration and delivery, for people who complain about it being difficult to understand - this is academic material meant to be studied and understood like a school textbook, not a novel you read during leisure.

my take

loved it. They tried to explain genetics to the lay person. Did well until the last few hrs. Great and convincing narrators.

good book

An interesting book about gens and sociology . If you are interested definitely read it

Checks all the curiosity bubbles

Within this book Dawkins sets up some very interesting scenarios to help represent his points and ideas in a much more simple way, because of this I would have questions after each one and it’s like he could read my mind! It’s a very interesting book and put me in a much different mindset on what life is and how it changes with time. Overall I really liked the switching between two narrators I felt it helped keep the book from being able to just let go to the back of your head and not take in. However, some of the authors notes at the end of each chapter were a bit exhaustive but most of them added value. I think it’s a excellent book to those curious in how evolution works and why we evolve this a very interesting theory and I quite like it I’d highly recommend. I’d like to add it has some more philosophical delays that are fun to think about for those who are inclined to do so.

another opinion, learning is everything.

I found this book extremely intellectual. I'll be honest, probably the hardest book to get through in my 60+ Audible collection. I adore the theory of "Nature Selection" it is very intriguing to me. I love his development of "memes" as well. His book shows high quality and this revised edition proves to me, (personally) that the idea of evolution is ever evolving (pun intended). I love expanding my knowledge on others views.

Eloquently Simple

I loved this book. if you're interested in understanding the basic origin of life on earth, this is a simple, understandable explanation of how life began. I would recommend this book to anybody interested in biology or science in general. I didn't want it to end.

Don't let your Gene's be memes.

I watched a character in a video game reference this book,I was not disappointed.

The Whole Truth

If someone approaches you with a conspiracy theory, false information or some other spurious idea, then I have simple retort for you to use ; "Prove it" .

This is a magnum opus that sets out to prove Dawkins' notions on Darwinian Evolution, and, from my layman's opinion, succeeds as comprehensively as the described replicators themselves.

Dawkins is unfortunately not quite the right fit to narrate this work, however. There is a certain vain smugness that the text contains, and this snooty superiority is greatly amplified by his clipped Oxbridge accent.
But, if you can get past that annoyance, this is one of the greatest texts of the entire 20th century literature.

More textbook than insightful

After many many recommendations to read this book, I was a bit disappointed that it read more like a biology textbook than an insightful view of how our genes influence human behavior. It is without a doubt a key work that advances evolutionary theory, I was just under the impression it had more to do with explaining human behavior