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The Tangled Tree
- A Radical New History of Life
- Narrated by: Jacques Roy
- Length: 13 hrs and 48 mins
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Publisher's summary
Nonpareil science writer David Quammen explains how recent discoveries in molecular biology can change our understanding of evolution and life’s history, with powerful implications for human health and even our own human nature.
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 - the study of life’s diversity and relatedness at the molecular level - is horizontal gene transfer (HGT), or the movement of genes across species lines. It turns out that HGT has been widespread and important. 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.
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- 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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Becoming Wild
- How Animal Cultures Raise Families, Create Beauty, and Achieve Peace
- By: Carl Safina
- Narrated by: Carl Safina
- Length: 13 hrs and 51 mins
- Unabridged
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Some people insist that culture is strictly a human feat. What are they afraid of? This book looks into three cultures of other-than-human beings in some of Earth's remaining wild places. It shows how if you're a sperm whale, a scarlet macaw, or a chimpanzee, you too experience your life with the understanding that you are an individual in a particular community. You too are who you are not by genes alone; your culture is a second form of inheritance. And your culture, too, changes and evolves.
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It all sinks in over the story—highly recommend
- By Knitting Fisherman on 06-13-20
By: Carl Safina
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The Rise and Reign of the Mammals
- A New History, from the Shadow of the Dinosaurs to Us
- By: Steve Brusatte
- Narrated by: Patrick Lawlor
- Length: 13 hrs and 25 mins
- Unabridged
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We humans are the inheritors of a dynasty that has reigned over the planet for nearly 66 million years, through fiery cataclysm and ice ages: the mammals. Our lineage includes saber-toothed tigers, woolly mammoths, armadillos the size of a car, cave bears three times the weight of a grizzly, clever scurriers that outlasted Tyrannosaurus rex, and even other types of humans, like Neanderthals.
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Fantastic Book
- By Peter Jensen on 09-08-22
By: Steve Brusatte
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The First Human
- The Race to Discover Our Earliest Ancestors
- By: Ann Gibbons
- Narrated by: Renee Raudman
- Length: 9 hrs and 54 mins
- Unabridged
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This dynamic chronicle of the race to find the "missing links" between humans and apes transports readers into the highly competitive world of fossil hunting and into the lives of the ambitious scientists intent on pinpointing the dawn of humankind. The quest to find where and when the earliest human ancestors first appeared is one of the most exciting and challenging of all scientific pursuits.
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Interesting subject, poor execution
- By A book reader on 10-14-06
By: Ann Gibbons
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A New History of Life
- The Radical New Discoveries About the Origins and Evolution of Life on Earth
- By: Peter Ward, Joe Kirschvink
- Narrated by: William Elsman
- Length: 14 hrs and 48 mins
- Unabridged
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Charles Darwin’s theories, first published more than 150 years ago, still set the paradigm of how we understand the evolution of life—but scientific advances of recent decades have radically altered that understanding. In fact the currently accepted history of life on Earth is flawed and out of date. Now two pioneering scientists, one already an award-winning popular author, deliver an eye-opening narrative that synthesizes a generation’s worth of insights from new research.
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Paleoatmospheres reveal species success or failure
- By Katibird on 11-25-23
By: Peter Ward, and others
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Otherlands
- A Journey Through Earth's Extinct Worlds
- By: Thomas Halliday
- Narrated by: Adetomiwa Edun
- Length: 11 hrs and 6 mins
- Unabridged
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The past is past, but it does leave clues, and Thomas Halliday has used cutting-edge science to decipher them more completely than ever before. In Otherlands, Halliday makes sixteen fossil sites burst to life.
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Great book brilliantly read
- By Dipam on 04-06-22
By: Thomas Halliday
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In Defense of Plants
- An Exploration into the Wonder of Plants
- By: Matt Candeias PhD
- Narrated by: Matthew Boston
- Length: 6 hrs and 16 mins
- Unabridged
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Since his early days of plant restoration, amateur plant scientist Matt Candeias has been enchanted with flora and the greater environmental ecology of the planet. Now, he looks at the study of plants through the lens of his ever-growing houseplant collection.
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Great book - mediocre narration
- By Brenda Mendoza on 05-15-21
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A Brief History of Everyone Who Ever Lived
- The Human Story Retold Through Our Genes
- By: Adam Rutherford
- Narrated by: Adam Rutherford
- Length: 12 hrs and 13 mins
- Unabridged
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In our unique genomes, every one of us carries the story of our species - births, deaths, disease, war, famine, migration, and a lot of sex. But those stories have always been locked away - until now. Who are our ancestors? Where did they come from? Geneticists have suddenly become historians, and the hard evidence in our DNA has completely upended what we thought we knew about ourselves. Acclaimed science writer Adam Rutherford explains exactly how genomics is completely rewriting the human story - from 100,000 years ago to the present.
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I wish this book was in American high schools.
- By melody sheldon on 03-31-19
By: Adam Rutherford
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Before the Dawn
- Recovering the Lost History of Our Ancestors
- By: Nicholas Wade
- Narrated by: Alan Sklar
- Length: 12 hrs and 49 mins
- Unabridged
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Just in the last three years a flood of new scientific findings, driven by revelations discovered in the human genome, has provided compelling new answers to many long-standing mysteries about our most ancient ancestors, the people who first evolved in Africa and then went on to colonize the whole world. Nicholas Wade weaves this host of news-making findings together for the first time into an intriguing new history of the human story before the dawn of civilization.
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Amazing information
- By Albert on 06-15-07
By: Nicholas Wade
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Some Assembly Required
- Decoding Four Billion Years of Life, from Ancient Fossils to DNA
- By: Neil Shubin
- Narrated by: Marc Cashman
- Length: 7 hrs and 28 mins
- Unabridged
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Over billions of years, ancient fish evolved to walk on land, reptiles transformed into birds that fly, and apelike primates evolved into humans that walk on two legs, talk, and write. For more than a century, paleontologists have traveled the globe to find fossils that show how such changes have happened.
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Interesting but thin. ANNOYING narration
- By MSB on 04-10-20
By: Neil Shubin
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Life's Edge
- The Search for What It Means to Be Alive
- By: Carl Zimmer
- Narrated by: Joe Ochman
- Length: 9 hrs and 15 mins
- Unabridged
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Carl Zimmer investigates one of the biggest questions of all: What is life? The answer seems obvious until you try to seriously answer it. Is the apple sitting on your kitchen counter alive, or is only the apple tree it came from deserving of the word? If we can’t answer that question here on Earth, how will we know when and if we discover alien life on other worlds? The question hangs over some of society’s most charged conflicts - whether a fertilized egg is a living person, for example, and when we ought to declare a person legally dead.
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What is Life?
- By Shane S Shull on 04-29-21
By: Carl Zimmer
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A New History of Life
- By: Stuart Sutherland, The Great Courses
- Narrated by: Stuart Sutherland
- Length: 17 hrs and 46 mins
- Original Recording
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The story of our world and the different living things that have populated it is an amazing epic with millions of species, exotic settings, planet-wide cataclysms, and surprising plot twists. These 36 lectures tell the all-embracing story of life on Earth - its origins, extinctions, and evolutions - in a manner that assumes no background in science. At half an hour per lecture, you’ll cover the entire 4.54-billion-year history of Earth in 18 hours, averaging 70,000 years per second!
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Get the video version
- By B. Bartosh on 06-17-19
By: Stuart Sutherland, and others
What listeners say about The Tangled Tree
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- R. Sloup
- 08-12-21
great balance for scientist or anyone
lots of context that would be hard to get without tons of reading. lots of details that tell you about the nuance of science and success
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- Linda
- 01-02-20
for those who love biology
there are two stories in this book: one about Carl Woese and a second about genetics. I enjoyed them both.
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- Paul Skaar
- 12-31-19
wow! best audio book ever made.
a wonderfully well written science story read perfectly. Mr. Roy brings so much to the writing that I expect he'll get an Audie at some point. Mr. Quammen takes us on a marvelous tour that starts with a carefully crafted escalator rise to a comprehensive vantage point. He then hands us thrilling understanding with ease. this is a feat of science writing to set a new bar and it is read so well that I can't think of an appropriate comparison.
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- Max
- 09-18-18
exceptional
exceptional. i am a researcher in the field and the science here is exceptional. much appreciation.
and i also loved the acting.
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7 people found this helpful
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- Elliot
- 01-18-19
More a history of personalities than a treatise on Horizontal gene transfer
Horizontal gene transfer is exciting field. David Quammen clearly understands the material but felt inclined to heavily focus on the scientists involved in the field. He also sketches a history of how our knowledge of general evolution evolved. Understandably, HGT would be too dry without weaving in the personalities of the scientists involved. But the book would be a lot shorter and more focused.
Jacques Roy does the book justice and utilizes an array of accents to portray quotes from English, French and German scientists. He narrates flawlessly but with a somewhat whispering voice as if sharing a secret.
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- Ian K O'Malley
- 06-07-20
Evolutionary Science revisited
This a great review of current evolutionary thought. I was captivated by the many new avenues of study under the large umbrella of Evolutionary Science...
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- Robert
- 03-29-19
Fine book on a complex topic
David Quammen is skillful and engaging as he helps curious non-sceintists grasp what would otherwise be impenetrably complex matters in biology and evolution. Here he starts with the familiar Tree of Life, proposed by Darwin as a helpful metaphor for his theory of how plants and animals change over time and produce new and ever more varied species that diverge and branch from the ancestral trunk. He then shows how recent generations of researchers have complicated this way of representing biological change. They have discovered life forms that defy existing categories. They have found evidence that symbiosis plays a larger role in the creation of new species than was previously understood. And they have discovered mechanisms of gene transfer among species that are direct, horizontal and, since they bypass reproduction, non-Darwinian. Indeed these discoveries complicate the very concept of discrete species and of discrete individuals within a species. It's dizzying and disorienting, but in a good way.
One minor complaint about Jacques Roy's generally good reading of the book: He, or perhaps his producer, decided to render quotations from the writings of German, French and British scientists in foreign accents. The accents aren't at all convincing, but even if they were, such characterizations are unnecessary and distracting in a work of this kind.
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- Andy Capo
- 10-10-18
Entertaining and facenating.
Loved every minute of it. I was entertained while being educated on a subject that I was surprised to learn I knew so little about.
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- D. Squires
- 12-23-18
evolution revisited
having last studied evolution 30 years ago... this refresher was a delight. particularly entertaining as a view into the personal foibles of the brilliant people who pushed this science forward.
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- MalcT
- 12-20-19
Enjoyable tracing of development of genetics
Could have been a "Darwin creation" basher but avoided the trap - traces the development of ideas and hypotheses in genetics accepting the failing of some scientists to use "faith" when techniques were not available to prove or disprove their theories at that time - easy to listen to and follow arguments
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