
Flights of Fancy
Defying Gravity by Design and Evolution
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Narrated by:
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Richard Dawkins
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By:
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Richard Dawkins
About this listen
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?
In Flights of Fancy, Richard Dawkins explains how nature and humans have learned to overcome the pull of gravity and take to the skies. From the mythical Icarus, to the sadly extinct but spectacular bird Argentavis magnificens, from the Wright flyer and the 747, to the Tinkerbella fairyfly and the Peregrine falcon. But it is also about flights of the mind, about escaping the everyday - through science, ideas and imagination.
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- By: Richard Dawkins
- Narrated by: Richard Dawkins, Lalla Ward
- Length: 13 hrs and 52 mins
- Unabridged
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Discover magazine recently called Richard Dawkins "Darwin's Rottweiler" for his fierce and effective defense of evolution. Prospect magazine voted him among the top three public intellectuals in the world (along with Umberto Eco and Noam Chomsky). Now Dawkins turns his considerable intellect on religion, denouncing its faulty logic and the suffering it causes.
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Dangerous Religion
- By Rick Just on 12-21-06
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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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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An Appetite for Wonder
- The Making of a Scientist
- By: Richard Dawkins
- Narrated by: Richard Dawkins, Lalla Ward
- Length: 7 hrs and 56 mins
- Unabridged
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In his first memoir, Richard Dawkins shares a rare view into his early life, his intellectual awakening at Oxford, and his path to writing The Selfish Gene. This is an intimate memoir of the childhood and intellectual development of the evolutionary biologist and world-famous atheist and how he came to write what is widely held to be one of the most important books of the 20th century.
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The Memoir of a Genius
- By Wurm on 09-25-13
By: Richard Dawkins
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The Selfish Gene
- By: Richard Dawkins
- Narrated by: Richard Dawkins, Lalla Ward
- Length: 16 hrs and 12 mins
- Unabridged
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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.
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Better than print!
- By J. D. May on 07-31-12
By: Richard Dawkins
What listeners say about Flights of Fancy
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- Rebekah Hull
- 02-04-22
What a wonderful book
I'm well above the target age group, but was looking for something to listen to at work. This is exactly the type of book I would have LOVED to own as a young person. It explores the questions of how flight works, what it's for, and how it originates, giving just enough information on each topic to spark fascination without getting bogged down. Analogies and examples simplify complex topics and make them easy to understand. Dawkins is an exuberant narrator whose love of nature and science is clear and infectious. this is a great book and I will probably end up sending it as a gift to a few people.
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- Seth
- 03-20-23
Sparks interest and curiosity
Dawkins yet again, never fails to educate his topics so articulately to his readers. I also recommend reading along with the physical book to enjoy the amazing artwork along the way.
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- William Tran
- 10-01-23
Another fantastic book by Richard Dawkins.
If you are already a Dawkins fan, you know how well he writes. If you haven’t been introduced to his work, this is as good a book many of his other masterpieces. He will walk you through, step-by-step, comparing human designed flights and the various forms of evolutionary developments of biological flights on our planet. Buy it. Listen to it. Enjoy it. And share the knowledge.
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- NIKKI
- 03-08-25
Excellent informative book.
Interesting an informative. Richard Dawkins with another amazing read. Highly recommend. I saw him live at one of his events. He signed my book outgrowing god.
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- Jan Valencia
- 12-17-21
5 Stars For a reason
I thought I was pretty well informed about flying but every few minute of listening I learned something new, we’ll written, well read by the author, I listened to it in one sitting and I’m starting over to absorb even more.
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5 people found this helpful
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- Sam
- 09-15-22
Could Have Been Better
Seemed like most are from 'The Ancestors' Tale'. But a good combination of basic Physics of flight and evolution. But could have been better if it contained little more advanced topics and contents.
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- aaron
- 12-19-21
Thank God for Richard Dawkins!
Dawkins excels at popular science books, and this is quite possibly his best effort to date. He explains very complex systems in ways that even an idiot like me can understand. He is truly a gift from God.
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8 people found this helpful
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- Sage Man
- 09-14-22
Now my favorite Dawkins book
Richard Dawkins writes and speaks eloquently comparable to Carl Sagan. He’s able to convey complicated ideas in a way palpable to the average listener.
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- Chad
- 03-19-24
It's alright.
It's ok.
It's a collection of fun facts related to biology, evolution, human history and the science of flight. I'm not 100% sold on "flight" being a suitably cohesive theme to make all this work together as a logical whole.
It's not bad, but wouldn't be the first Richard Dawkins book I recommend to people.
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- Jeff Koeppen
- 11-11-22
Fascinating History of Animal Flight
Flights of Fancy would be an excellent introduction to Dawkins to a first time reader. It's an excellent, succinct, and to-the-point book about the history of flight (and gliding) in the animal kingdom, including the relatively short history of human flight.
While relatively short by Dawkins' standards, less than five hours in audio divided in to short chapters, the book is packed with a ton of great biological information and interesting observations, all read to you by the world's preeminent evolutionary biologist. As always his prose is smooth and satisfying, and he manages to sprinkle some humor in here and there for good measure. When it comes right down to it, it's really amazing that animals can fly so efficiently considering the amount of energy required and physical traits needed to overcome the Earth's gravity.
After looking at the previews of the Kindle and print additions I regret not buying the physical version of the book. The illustrations are fantastic and numerous. I'll have to spend a lunch hour at Barnes and Noble with it to take them all in.
Richard is 81 now and I hope he has some more books in him. I've seen him speak in person twice, in Rochester MN and Dallas. My wife and I flew to Dallas in 2018 and bought the meet and greet passes for his appearance with the great Carolyn Porco. It was a thrill for me to chat with him and get a picture of the two of us. He is one of humanity's brightest minds.
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1 person found this helpful