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The Ancestor's Tale
- A Pilgrimage to the Dawn of Evolution
- Narrated by: Richard Dawkins, Lalla Ward
- Length: 8 hrs and 55 mins
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As great as everyone says it is
- By Joseph on 12-01-10
By: Jerry A. Coyne
Publisher's summary
In The Ancestor's Tale, evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins offers a masterwork: an exhilarating reverse tour through evolution, from present-day humans back to the microbial beginnings of life four billion years ago. Throughout the journey, Dawkins spins entertaining, insightful stories and sheds light on topics such as speciation, sexual selection, and extinction. The Ancestor's Tale is at once an essential education in evolutionary theory and riveting in its telling.
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- MovieExpertise
- 09-29-16
Please do an unabridged version!
Would you consider the audio edition of The Ancestor's Tale to be better than the print version?
This is an amazing book but as others have said it is severely diminished by being abridged. Please notify me when a complete version is available an I'll buy it immediately.
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35 people found this helpful
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- gomi
- 03-23-16
Heavily Abridged
Is there anything you would change about this book?
I didn't understand that I was buying the abridged version of The Ancestor's Tale. I don't remember seeing that stated so clearly as it is here. I enjoyed what I did hear of the book, but realized, after referring to the print copy, that the Audible version is heavily abridged.
Were the concepts of this book easy to follow, or were they too technical?
Yes, the book was a pleasure.
What does Richard Dawkins and Lalla Ward bring to the story that you wouldn’t experience if you just read the book?
They have lovely reading voices.
If this book were a movie would you go see it?
Absolutely.
Any additional comments?
Would love to have the full unabridged version available from Audible.
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30 people found this helpful
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- J. Colombe
- 07-21-15
Good book, poorly abridged for audio
Abridgment was conducted by chopping out entire sections of the modular storyline. One segment late in the book played twice. Why not leave a good book unabridged?
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29 people found this helpful
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- S. Spencer
- 03-17-17
ABRIDGED!
I don't know guys, I'm sure this is missing a tale or two. Where is the Tale of the Cauliflower? or the Nautilus? Everything else about it is great.
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11 people found this helpful
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- Lamont
- 07-27-15
To Short
It would of had one more star but it's only the abridged version and there is no unabridged version
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11 people found this helpful
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- Richard
- 06-11-15
A Masterpiece Flawed By Sketchy Narration.
Where does The Ancestor's Tale rank among all the audiobooks you’ve listened to so far?
In my view, this ranks in the 70th percentile of my accumulated library topics.
What did you like best about this story?
The retrograde methodology of examining the branched tree of speciation is unique and interesting. The comparison to Chaucer's Epic created some amusing and informative learning moments.
Who would you have cast as narrator instead of Richard Dawkins and Lalla Ward ?
Anyone else but the author. While I have the utmost respect for the esteemed and brilliant Richard Dawkins, his narration style was often hard to follow due to constant unusual vocal volume fades and unexpected changes in speech pace. As soon as the ear/brain finally adjusted to this choppy style over a few minutes or so, co-narrator Lalla Ward would then take the helm, necessitating yet another listening shift. Then the ball was passed back to Professor Dawkins, back and forth.I found this constant narration swap to be highly disruptive and feel that a single professional narrator would have made this a more seamless and enjoyable process.
Was this a book you wanted to listen to all in one sitting?
Not at all. It was very information rich and ( for me) was best digested in many sessions.
Any additional comments?
Be wary of author narrations with an added second voice.
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10 people found this helpful
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- sedroray
- 04-08-19
!!! Extremely Abridged !!!
The unabridged book is, without a doubt, the most wondrous and beautiful thing I've ever read. I cannot express how disappointing this audio version is. It isn't abridged, it's truncated, summarized, and diminished. I get it, the book is HUGE. This Cliff Notes version, however, is not the answer. I'd happily pay 3 or more credits for a full version, even with a less delightful narrator. I'd eagerly pay a credit a piece for parts 1 - 4 of an unabridged version. This joyless outline is a disservice to Audible, the Author, and any listener unfortunate enough to waste time and money on it.
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9 people found this helpful
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- Kaiden Fox
- 11-22-16
wish it wasn't so abridged.
a longer version would have an unwieldy amount of pictures to refer to, perhaps, but I wish the audiobook was longer.
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4 people found this helpful
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- Alex Eaton
- 08-03-15
Great Book; Distracting Narration
The book was great but I didn't like the tag team narration. I also was hoping for more detail about our human cousins but that wasn't the specific focus is the book.
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- Male Perspective
- 06-16-15
Always Enjoyable
I enjoy Dawkins's books. I love his passion for what does which makes listening very pleasurable. I like the emphasis of Lala's tag team narrative in all of Dawkins's books. This book is not my favorite of his books but does deliver a lot interesting thoughts and concepts.
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Story
The Greatest Show on Earth is a stunning counterattack on advocates of "Intelligent Design," explaining the evidence for evolution while exposing the absurdities of the creationist "argument". Dawkins sifts through rich layers of scientific evidence: from living examples of natural selection to clues in the fossil record; from natural clocks that mark the vast epochs wherein evolution ran its course to the intricacies of developing embryos; from plate tectonics to molecular genetics.
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Back to His Strong Suit
- By Dalton on 09-23-09
By: Richard Dawkins
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The Magic of Reality
- How We Know What's Really True
- By: Richard Dawkins
- Narrated by: Richard Dawkins, Lalla Ward
- Length: 6 hrs and 42 mins
- Unabridged
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Richard Dawkins, the world’s most famous evolutionary biologist, presents a gorgeously lucid, science book examining some of the nature’s most fundamental questions both from a mythical and scientific perspective. Science is our most precise and powerful tool for making sense of the world. Before we developed the scientific method, we created rich mythologies to explain the unknown. The pressing questions that primitive men and women asked are the same ones we ask as children. Who was the first person? What is the sun? Why is there night and day?
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Audio version is superb for us grown-ups
- By Michael Dowd on 10-10-11
By: Richard Dawkins
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The Blind Watchmaker
- Why the Evidence of Evolution Reveals a Universe Without Design
- By: Richard Dawkins
- Narrated by: Richard Dawkins, Lalla Ward
- Length: 14 hrs and 40 mins
- Unabridged
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The Blind Watchmaker, knowledgably narrated by author Richard Dawkins, is as prescient and timely a book as ever. The watchmaker belongs to the 18th-century theologian William Paley, who argued that just as a watch is too complicated and functional to have sprung into existence by accident, so too must all living things, with their far greater complexity, be purposefully designed. Charles Darwin's brilliant discovery challenged the creationist arguments; but only Richard Dawkins could have written this elegant riposte.
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Challenging textbook more than an enjoyable listen
- By Eric on 01-15-12
By: Richard Dawkins
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Brief Candle in the Dark
- My Life in Science
- By: Richard Dawkins
- Narrated by: Richard Dawkins
- Length: 13 hrs and 53 mins
- Unabridged
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In this hugely entertaining sequel to the New York Times best-selling memoir An Appetite for Wonder, Richard Dawkins delves deeply into his intellectual life spent kick-starting new conversations about science, culture, and religion and writing yet another of the most audacious and widely read books of the 20th century - The God Delusion.
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I'm a Dawkins Groupie but...
- By Anne on 10-18-15
By: Richard Dawkins
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Outgrowing God
- A Beginner's Guide
- By: Richard Dawkins
- Narrated by: Richard Dawkins
- Length: 6 hrs and 38 mins
- Unabridged
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In 12 fiercely funny, mind-expanding chapters, Dawkins explains how the natural world arose without a designer - the improbability and beauty of the "bottom-up programming" that engineers an embryo or a flock of starlings - and challenges head-on some of the most basic assumptions made by the world’s religions: Do you believe in God? Which one? Is the Bible a "Good Book"? Is adhering to a religion necessary, or even likely, to make people good to one another? Outgrowing God is a concise, provocative guide to thinking for yourself.
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No new ground is covered.
- By God(less) on 11-05-19
By: Richard Dawkins
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River out of Eden
- A Darwinian View of Life
- By: Richard Dawkins
- Narrated by: Richard Dawkins, Lalla Ward
- Length: 5 hrs and 11 mins
- Unabridged
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How did the replication bomb we call "life" begin, and where in the world, or rather, in the universe, is it heading? Writing with characteristic wit and an ability to clarify complex phenomena (the New York Times described his style as "[T]he sort of science writing that makes the reader feel like a genius"), Richard Dawkins confronts this ancient mystery.
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Loved it
- By Jeff P on 09-19-20
By: Richard Dawkins
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Science in the Soul
- Selected Writings of a Passionate Rationalist
- By: Richard Dawkins
- Narrated by: Richard Dawkins, Lalla Ward, Gillian Somerscales
- Length: 14 hrs and 40 mins
- Unabridged
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For decades Richard Dawkins has been the world's most brilliant scientific communicator, consistently illuminating the wonders of nature and attacking faulty logic. Science in the Soul brings together 42 essays, polemics, and paeans - culled from personal papers, newspapers, lectures, and online salons - all written with Dawkins' characteristic erudition, remorseless wit, and unjaded awe of the natural world.
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Great writing; distracting reading
- By Chris DeMuth Jr on 08-09-17
By: Richard Dawkins
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Flights of Fancy
- Defying Gravity by Design and Evolution
- By: Richard Dawkins
- Narrated by: Richard Dawkins
- Length: 4 hrs and 46 mins
- Unabridged
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The wonder of flight. The science of evolution. From both, Richard Dawkins weaves a fascinating account of how nature and humans have learned to overcome the pull of gravity and take to the skies. Have you ever dreamt you could fly? Or imagined what it would be like to glide and swoop through the sky like a bird? Do you let your mind soar to unknown, magical spaces?
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Thank God for Richard Dawkins!
- By aaron on 12-19-21
By: Richard Dawkins
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The Four Horsemen
- The Conversation That Sparked an Atheist Revolution
- By: Christopher Hitchens, Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris, and others
- Narrated by: Richard Dawkins, Daniel C. Dennett, Sam Harris, and others
- Length: 3 hrs and 4 mins
- Unabridged
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In 2007, Christopher Hitchens, Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris, and Daniel Dennett filmed a landmark discussion about modern atheism. The video went viral. Now, the transcript of their conversation is illuminated by new essays from three of the original participants and an introduction by Stephen Fry.
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Short
- By Cole Brandon Eckhardt on 03-22-19
By: Christopher Hitchens, and others
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Books Do Furnish a Life
- An Electrifying Celebration of Science Writing
- By: Richard Dawkins
- Narrated by: Richard Dawkins, Lalla Ward, Neil deGrasse Tyson, and others
- Length: 15 hrs and 47 mins
- Unabridged
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Books Do Furnish a Life is divided by theme, including celebrating nature, exploring humanity, and interrogating faith. For the first time, it brings together Richard Dawkins's forewords, afterwords and introductions to the work of some of the leading thinkers of our age - Carl Sagan, Lawrence Krauss, Jacob Bronowski, Lewis Wolpert - with a selection of his reviews to provide an electrifying celebration of science writing, both fiction and non-fiction. It is also a sparkling addition to Dawkins's own remarkable canon of work.
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Loved it!
- By Rebekah on 11-03-23
By: Richard Dawkins
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The Portable Atheist
- Essential Readings for the Nonbeliever
- By: Christopher Hitchens
- Narrated by: Nicholas Ball
- Length: 10 hrs and 44 mins
- Abridged
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