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The Reluctant Mr. Darwin
- Charles Darwin and the Making of His Theory of Evolution
- Narrated by: Grover Gardner
- Length: 7 hrs and 52 mins
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Publisher's summary
Drawing from Darwin's secret notebooks and personal letters, David Quammen has sketched a vivid life portrait of the man whose work remains controversial today.
Critic reviews
"Grover Gardner is a first-rate reader who seems genuinely to enjoy recounting the foibles of Darwin's life. An excellent general audience title." (Library Journal)
"Grover Gardner’s reading pulses with the excitement of Quammen’s quest. As the author sifts through Darwin’s developing insights and personality quirks...Gardner is perfectly alert to the author’s subtle irony and humor..." (Audiofile)
"It's easy to hear why PW named Grover Gardner Narrator of the Year in '05. He uses inflection, stress, rhythm and his rich vocal range to create an easy and often amusing conversational style." (Publishers Weekly)Â
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What listeners say about The Reluctant Mr. Darwin
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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Overall
- J B Tipton
- 11-06-07
Darwin portrait.
This is a well-written and entertaining book. It would be a fine introduction to Darwin and the Origin of Species. Grover Gardner is the best reader of non-fiction I have heard.
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16 people found this helpful
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Overall
- Lucas
- 09-26-09
A very pleasant surprise
I picked this one up during one of Audible's $5 sales. I didn't know much about it but, as a science enthusiast and educator, I wanted to know more about Darwin and gave it a try. I finished it with a deeper reverence for Darwin's genius and an understanding of who he was as a human and scholar.
I enjoyed the writer's style and appreciate the amount of research he did to help the reader understand what Darwin's contemporaries believed. It's rather a mystery to us now that Darwin conceived of natural selection and let decades pass without publishing (see Bryson's "Short History of Nearly Everything"). This book explains why Darwin delayed and helped me better understand natural selection and, as I said, Darwin's genius to conceive of it at a time when other "biologists" attributed everything to God's handiwork. Give it a try and I think you'll enjoy!
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8 people found this helpful
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- A. Sisk
- 06-10-12
Contemplating the life and times of Darwin.
Would you listen to The Reluctant Mr. Darwin again? Why?
This book covers some biographical details surrounding his life and his theories, and what they meant socially and culturally at the time. Packed with fun facts and contemplation true to David Quammen's writing.
What about Grover Gardner’s performance did you like?
He is a good reader, unobtrusive, pleasant to listen to.
Any additional comments?
If you want to understand Darwin the man and how all his work came to be, read this.
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5 people found this helpful
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- P. Smith
- 05-09-21
Heresy rewardex
Imagine you are alive when Christian apostates were still being burned at the stake, the last auto de fe was in 1852. Imagine further that your professional reputation is on the line. and you want to publish your idea that humans were created by natural selection. And that the wife you adored wanted to share eternity with you, an impossibility if you rejected Christianity.
This was Charles Darwin in the 19th century And this is a great book re that dilemma.
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4 people found this helpful
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Overall
- Parola138
- 12-14-10
what i was looking for
Sometimes its hit or miss with a book like this. I, however, was very pleased with the production and the writing. I thought the narrator was perfect. You have to be interested in the topic, because Darwin did not lead a very daring life. Yet I found great interest in this book.
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4 people found this helpful
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Overall
- Cate F.
- 08-22-09
Oddly Anachronistic Writing
A very interesting topic, perfect narrator, but the writing style was jarringly slangy and casual for a book about a brilliant 19th Century scientist. Still, my complaint is only severe enough to reduce my rating by one star.
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4 people found this helpful
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- Abbas
- 08-12-17
A paranoid gentle honest man.
Well written and well narrated book. The general intellectual environment is well described. Not too detailed and mentioned main points very well. It however had a bit too much of the author's opinions. Overall an enjoyable listen.
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3 people found this helpful
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- Kindle Customer
- 02-16-17
Worth the read
If you are remotely a fan of Darwin or evolutionary biology, then you will enjoy this book. I've had a bit too much education on both subjects and the things covered in the book are both consistent with what I know, and expand on what I know. Very well written.
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3 people found this helpful
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Overall
- Henry Rosenberg MD
- 08-14-09
Darwin's life and times
A great portrayal of a wonderful scientist who, using simple experiments and observations and using objective reasoning came to astonishing conclusions that although controversial have stood the test of time.
One of the great thinkers and observers of the 19th century that changed how we see the world.
I learned a lot.
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- tetrahymena
- 03-17-22
Insightful study of a great mind.
Darwin never set out to be controversial, but his pursuit of science dumped him into one of the greatest social controversies that resound in some places to this day. The book looks more at the man than his most famous insight, natural selection. It looks at how his reasoning and thinking changed in the light of the evidence that he collected, It explores how he groped with the implications of his theory, and how it impacted his relationship with others. A great biography about a critical phase in a life and an insight that has influenced every branch of biology down to today.
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Story
In the mid-1970s, scientists began using DNA sequences to reexamine the history of all life. Perhaps the most startling discovery to come out of this new field is horizontal gene transfer (HGT), or the movement of genes across species lines. For instance, we now know that roughly eight percent of the human genome arrived not through traditional inheritance from directly ancestral forms, but sideways by viral infection - a type of HGT. In The Tangled Tree David Quammen chronicles these discoveries through the lives of the researchers who made them.
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Very Enjoyable and Readable
- By Dennis on 08-18-18
By: David Quammen
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Monster of God
- By: David Quammen
- Narrated by: Brian Holsopple
- Length: 16 hrs and 35 mins
- Unabridged
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For millennia, lions, tigers, and their man-eating kin have kept our dark, scary forests dark and scary, and their predatory majesty has been the stuff of folklore. But by the year 2150 big predators may only exist on the other side of glass barriers and chain-link fences. Their gradual disappearance is changing the very nature of our existence. We no longer occupy an intermediate position on the food chain; instead we survey it invulnerably from above - so far above that we are in danger of forgetting that we even belong to an ecosystem.
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Great book, shame about the performance
- By Shirzy on 05-23-18
By: David Quammen
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Spillover
- By: David Quammen
- Narrated by: Jonathan Yen
- Length: 20 hrs and 47 mins
- Unabridged
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The emergence of strange new diseases is a frightening problem that seems to be getting worse. In this age of speedy travel, it threatens a worldwide pandemic. We hear news reports of Ebola, SARS, AIDS, and something called Hendra killing horses and people in Australia - but those reports miss the big truth that such phenomena are part of a single pattern. The bugs that transmit these diseases share one thing: they originate in wild animals and pass to humans by a process called spillover. David Quammen tracks this subject around the world.
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Fascinating, but not Riveting
- By L. M. Roberts on 03-08-14
By: David Quammen
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Breathless
- The Scientific Race to Defeat a Deadly Virus
- By: David Quammen
- Narrated by: Jacques Roy
- Length: 13 hrs and 26 mins
- Unabridged
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Breathless is the story of SARS-CoV-2 and its fierce journey through the human population, as seen by the scientists who study its origin, its ever-changing nature, and its capacity to kill us. David Quammen expertly shows how strange new viruses emerge from animals into humans as we disrupt wild ecosystems, and how those viruses adapt to their human hosts, sometimes causing global catastrophe. He explains why this coronavirus will probably be a “forever virus”, destined to circulate among humans and bedevil us endlessly, in one variant form or another.Â
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Amazing read and they must read
- By stacy roth-hark on 05-08-23
By: David Quammen
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Ebola
- The Natural and Human History of a Deadly Virus
- By: David Quammen
- Narrated by: Mel Foster
- Length: 4 hrs and 49 mins
- Unabridged
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In 1976 a deadly virus emerged from the Congo forest. As swiftly as it came, it disappeared, leaving no trace. Over the four decades since, Ebola has emerged sporadically, each time to devastating effect. It can kill up to 90 percent of its victims. In between these outbreaks, it is untraceable, hiding deep in the jungle. The search is on to find Ebola's elusive host animal.
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Concentrated and accessible
- By S. Yates on 03-23-18
By: David Quammen
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A Planet of Viruses [Third Edition]
- By: Carl Zimmer
- Narrated by: Stephen Bowlby
- Length: 3 hrs and 27 mins
- Unabridged
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In 2020, an invisible germ - a virus - wholly upended our lives. We're most familiar with the viruses that give us colds or Covid-19. But viruses also cause a vast range of other diseases, including one disorder that makes people sprout branch-like growths as if they were trees. Viruses have been a part of our lives for so long that we are actually part virus: the human genome contains more DNA from viruses than our own genes. Meanwhile, scientists are discovering viruses everywhere they look: in the soil, in the ocean, even in deep caves miles underground.
By: Carl Zimmer
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Keats
- A Brief Life in Nine Poems and One Epitaph
- By: Lucasta Miller
- Narrated by: Sally Scott
- Length: 10 hrs and 4 mins
- Unabridged
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Miller, through Keats’s poetry, brilliantly resurrects and brings vividly to life, the man, the poet in all his complexity and spirit, living dangerously, disdaining respectability and cultural norms, and embracing subversive politics. Keats was a lower-middle-class outsider from a tragic and fractured family, whose extraordinary energy and love of language allowed him to pummel his way into the heart of English literature; a freethinker and a liberal at a time of repression, who delighted in the sensation of the moment.
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A Romantic Life
- By David on 05-03-22
By: Lucasta Miller
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The Beak of the Finch
- A Story of Evolution in Our Time
- By: Jonathan Weiner
- Narrated by: Victor Bevine
- Length: 12 hrs and 14 mins
- Unabridged
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Rosemary and Peter Grant and those assisting them have spend 20 years on Daphne Major, an island in the Galapagos, studying natural selection. They recognize each individual bird on the island, when there are 400 at the time of the author's visit or when there are over a thousand. They have observed about 20 generations of finches - continuously.Jonathan Weiner follows these scientists as they watch Darwin's finches and come up with a new understanding of life itself.
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Fascinating in-depth look at evolution in action
- By Philip on 05-15-11
By: Jonathan Weiner
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On the Origin of Species
- By: Charles Darwin
- Narrated by: Peter Wickham
- Length: 21 hrs and 2 mins
- Unabridged
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Perhaps the most influential science book ever written, On the Origin of Species has continued to fascinate for more than a century after its initial publication. Its controversial theory that populations evolve and adapt through a process known as natural selection led to heated scientific, philosophical, and religious debate, revolutionizing every discipline in its wake. With its clear, concise, and surprisingly enjoyable prose, On the Origin of Species is both captivating and edifying.
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Wonderful book - tough listen
- By Henry on 03-22-18
By: Charles Darwin
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A Most Remarkable Creature
- The Hidden Life and Epic Journey of the World's Smartest Birds of Prey
- By: Jonathan Meiburg
- Narrated by: Jonathan Meiburg
- Length: 9 hrs and 52 mins
- Unabridged
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An enthralling account of a modern voyage of discovery as we meet the clever, social birds of prey called caracaras, which puzzled Darwin, fascinate modern-day falconers, and carry secrets of our planet's deep past in their family history.
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I don't leave reviews often, but . . .
- By Steven L Peck on 06-24-21
By: Jonathan Meiburg
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I Contain Multitudes
- The Microbes Within Us and a Grander View of Life
- By: Ed Yong
- Narrated by: Charlie Anson
- Length: 9 hrs and 52 mins
- Unabridged
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Joining the ranks of popular science classics like The Botany of Desire and The Selfish Gene, a groundbreaking, wondrously informative, and vastly entertaining examination of the most significant revolution in biology since Darwin - a "microbe's-eye view" of the world that reveals a marvelous, radically reconceived picture of life on Earth.
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Undoes what you've learned from the headlines
- By Tristan on 10-14-16
By: Ed Yong
Related to this topic
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The Book That Changed America
- How Darwin's Theory of Evolution Ignited a Nation
- By: Randall Fuller
- Narrated by: Stefan Rudnicki
- Length: 9 hrs and 40 mins
- Unabridged
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