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Letters to a Young Scientist
- Narrated by: Joe Barrett
- Length: 4 hrs and 57 mins
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Publisher's summary
Pulitzer Prize–winning biologist Edward O. Wilson imparts the wisdom of his storied career to the next generation.
Edward O. Wilson has distilled sixty years of teaching into a book for students, young and old. Reflecting on his coming-of-age in the South as a Boy Scout and a lover of ants and butterflies, Wilson threads these twenty-one letters, each richly illustrated, with autobiographical anecdotes that illuminate his career - both his successes and his failures - and his motivations for becoming a biologist. At a time in human history when our survival is more than ever linked to our understanding of science, Wilson insists that success in the sciences does not depend on mathematical skill, but rather a passion for finding a problem and solving it. From the collapse of stars to the exploration of rain forests and the oceans’ depths, Wilson instills a love of the innate creativity of science and a respect for the human being’s modest place in the planet’s ecosystem in his readers.
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Edward O. Wilson - winner of two Pulitzer prizes, champion of biodiversity, and Faculty Emeritus at Harvard University - is arguably one of the most important thinkers of the 20th century. Yet his celebrated career began not with an elite education but from an insatiable curiosity about the natural world and drive to explore its mysteries. Called "one of the finest scientific memoirs ever written" by the Los Angeles Times, Naturalist is a wise and personal account of Wilson's growth as a scientist and the evolution of the fields he helped define.
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insightful journey of the scientific life
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"Ants are the most warlike of all animals, with colony pitted against colony.... Their clashes dwarf Waterloo and Gettysburg", writes Edward O. Wilson in his most finely observed work in decades. In a myrmecological tour to such far-flung destinations as Mozambique and New Guinea, the Gulf of Mexico's Dauphin Island and even his parents' overgrown yard back in Alabama, Wilson thrillingly evokes his nine-decade-long scientific obsession with more than 15,000 ant species.
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Terrible narration, pointless rambling writing.
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This revised edition of Human Nature begins a new phase in the most important intellectual controversy of this generation: Is human behavior controlled by the species' biological heritage? Does this heritage limit human destiny?
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A Heralding Voice...
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Consilience
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In Consilience (a word that originally meant "jumping together"), Edward O. Wilson renews the Enlightenment's search for a unified theory of knowledge in disciplines that range from physics to biology, the social sciences and the humanities. Using the natural sciences as his model, Wilson forges dramatic links between fields. Presenting the latest findings in prose of wonderful clarity and oratorical eloquence, and synthesizing it into a dazzling whole, Consilience is science in the path-clearing traditions of Newton, Einstein, and Richard Feynman.
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A Singular Achievement!
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In Search of Nature
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Perhaps more than any other scientist of our century, Edward O. Wilson has scrutinized animals in their natural settings, tweezing out the dynamics of their social organization, their relationship with their environments, and their behavior, not only for what it tells us about the animals themselves, but for what it can tell us about human nature and our own behavior. He has brought the fascinating and sometimes surprising results of these studies to general readers through a remarkable collection of books.
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narration speed way too fast
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Genesis
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Asserting that religious creeds and philosophical questions can be reduced to purely genetic and evolutionary components, and that the human body and mind have a physical base obedient to the laws of physics and chemistry, Genesis demonstrates that the only way for us to fully understand human behavior is to study the evolutionary histories of nonhuman species. Of these, Wilson demonstrates that at least 17 - among them the African naked mole rat and the sponge-dwelling shrimp - have been found to have advanced societies based on altruism and cooperation.
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Simply awful
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Edward O. Wilson - winner of two Pulitzer prizes, champion of biodiversity, and Faculty Emeritus at Harvard University - is arguably one of the most important thinkers of the 20th century. Yet his celebrated career began not with an elite education but from an insatiable curiosity about the natural world and drive to explore its mysteries. Called "one of the finest scientific memoirs ever written" by the Los Angeles Times, Naturalist is a wise and personal account of Wilson's growth as a scientist and the evolution of the fields he helped define.
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insightful journey of the scientific life
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Terrible narration, pointless rambling writing.
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A Singular Achievement!
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narration speed way too fast
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Star for Watson, Crick, Wilkins, AND for FRANKLIN
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You just have to love ants
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Important book, but..
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Wow, Wilson has a lot to say and boy can he write.
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First published in 1949 and praised in the New York Times Book Review as "full of beauty and vigor and bite", A Sand County Almanac combines some of the finest nature writing since Thoreau with an outspoken and highly ethical regard for America's relationship to the land.
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Great in some ways; in others, wtf!
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Pleasant Humble Simple Rationalism
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Two different books
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The Only Book I reread imediatley after reading
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Focus on passion=Less stress and more success
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Favorite part was untrue :(
- By Al A'scgh on 08-13-18
By: Jeremy Narby
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Neanderthal Man
- In Search of Lost Genomes
- By: Svante Pääbo
- Narrated by: Dennis Holland
- Length: 10 hrs and 36 mins
- Unabridged
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A preeminent geneticist hunts the Neanderthal genome to answer the biggest question of them all: what does it mean to be human? What can we learn from the genes of our closest evolutionary relatives? Neanderthal Man tells the story of geneticist Svante Pbo’s mission to answer that question, beginning with the study of DNA in Egyptian mummies in the early 1980s and culminating in his sequencing of the Neanderthal genome in 2009.
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Excellent science tale
- By Neuron on 01-19-15
By: Svante Pääbo
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Evolution
- What the Fossils Say and Why it Matters: Adapted for Audio
- By: Donald R. Prothero
- Narrated by: John Bishop
- Length: 7 hrs and 14 mins
- Abridged
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Over the past 20 years, paleontologists have made tremendous fossil discoveries, including fossils that mark the growth of whales, manatees, and seals from land mammals and the origins of elephants, horses, and rhinos. Today there exists an amazing diversity of fossil humans, suggesting we walked upright long before we acquired large brains, and new evidence from molecules that enable scientists to decipher the tree of life as never before.
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NOT WORTH THE PRICE OF ADDMISSION
- By CRAIG on 12-25-14
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Genesis
- The Deep Origin of Societies
- By: Edward O. Wilson
- Narrated by: Jonathan Hogan
- Length: 3 hrs and 8 mins
- Unabridged
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Asserting that religious creeds and philosophical questions can be reduced to purely genetic and evolutionary components, and that the human body and mind have a physical base obedient to the laws of physics and chemistry, Genesis demonstrates that the only way for us to fully understand human behavior is to study the evolutionary histories of nonhuman species. Of these, Wilson demonstrates that at least 17 - among them the African naked mole rat and the sponge-dwelling shrimp - have been found to have advanced societies based on altruism and cooperation.
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Simply awful
- By Mike A Klotz on 02-07-20
By: Edward O. Wilson
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The Upright Thinkers
- The Human Journey From Living in Trees to Understanding the Cosmos
- By: Leonard Mlodinow
- Narrated by: Leonard Mlodinow
- Length: 12 hrs and 29 mins
- Unabridged
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In this fascinating and illuminating work, Leonard Mlodinow guides us through the critical eras and events in the development of science, all of which, he demonstrates, were propelled forward by humankind's collective struggle to know. From the birth of reasoning and culture to the formation of the studies of physics, chemistry, biology, and modern-day quantum physics, we come to see that much of our progress can be attributed to simple questions - why? how? - bravely asked.
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10/10 Got What I Wanted.
- By Austin on 09-22-15
By: Leonard Mlodinow
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Written in Stone
- Evolution, the Fossil Record, and Our Place in Nature
- By: Brian Switek
- Narrated by: L. J. Ganser
- Length: 11 hrs and 29 mins
- Unabridged
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Spectacular fossil finds make today's headlines; new technology unlocks secrets of skeletons unearthed 100 years ago. Still, evolution is often poorly represented by the media and misunderstood by the public. A potent antidote to pseudoscience, Written in Stone is an engrossing history of evolutionary discovery for anyone who has marveled at the variety and richness of life.
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Very good but has some weaknesses
- By Anonymous User on 06-23-19
By: Brian Switek
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The Most Perfect Thing
- By: Tim Birkhead
- Narrated by: Gareth Armstrong
- Length: 7 hrs and 18 mins
- Unabridged
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How are eggs of different shapes made, and why are they the shapes they are? When does the shell of an egg harden? Why do some eggs contain two yolks? How are the colours and patterns of eggshells created, and why do they vary? And which end of an egg is laid first - the blunt end or the pointy end?
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Great book about eggs!!
- By Timothy on 03-24-21
By: Tim Birkhead
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A Short History of Nearly Everything
- By: Bill Bryson
- Narrated by: Richard Matthews
- Length: 18 hrs and 13 mins
- Unabridged
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Bill Bryson has been an enormously popular author both for his travel books and for his books on the English language. Now, this beloved comic genius turns his attention to science. Although he doesn't know anything about the subject (at first), he is eager to learn, and takes information that he gets from the world's leading experts and explains it to us in a way that makes it exciting and relevant.
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The Only Book I reread imediatley after reading
- By Andrew on 11-09-09
By: Bill Bryson
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The Cosmic Serpent
- DNA and the Origins of Knowledge
- By: Jeremy Narby
- Narrated by: James Patrick Cronin
- Length: 4 hrs and 55 mins
- Unabridged
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This adventure in science and imagination, which the Medical Tribune said might herald "a Copernican revolution for the life sciences", leads the listener through unexplored jungles and uncharted aspects of mind to the heart of knowledge. In a first-person narrative of scientific discovery that opens new perspectives on biology, anthropology, and the limits of rationalism, The Cosmic Serpent reveals how startlingly different the world around us appears when we open our minds to it.
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Very Good Religious Text
- By Blair K. Hartman on 08-09-17
By: Jeremy Narby
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Population Wars
- A New Perspective on Competition and Coexistence
- By: Greg Graffin
- Narrated by: Tom Zingarelli
- Length: 10 hrs and 20 mins
- Unabridged
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Story
From the very beginning, life on Earth has been defined by war. Today, those first wars continue to be fought around and literally inside us, influencing our individual behavior and that of civilization as a whole. War between populations - whether between different species or between rival groups of humans - is seen as an inevitable part of the evolutionary process. The popular concept of "the survival of the fittest" explains and often excuses these actions.
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Life Changing Book. No other like it.
- By Abraham R. Herrick-Rough on 05-16-16
By: Greg Graffin
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Deep Truth
- Igniting the Memory of Our Origin, History, Destiny, and Fate
- By: Gregg Braden
- Narrated by: Gregg Braden
- Length: 9 hrs and 37 mins
- Unabridged
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A new world is emerging before our eyes, while the unsustainable world of the past struggles to continue. Both worlds reflect the beliefs of our past. Both exist - but only for now. Which world do you choose? Best-selling author and visionary scientist Gregg Braden suggests that the hottest issues that divide us as families, nations, and civilizations-seemingly separate concerns such as war, terror, abortion, suicide, genocide, the death penalty, poverty, economic collapse, and nuclear war - are actually related.
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Good Information
- By David on 08-13-12
By: Gregg Braden
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insightful journey of the scientific life
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Simply awful
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When we think of fungi, we likely think of mushrooms. But mushrooms are only fruiting bodies, analogous to apples on a tree. Most fungi live out of sight, yet make up a massively diverse kingdom of organisms that supports and sustains nearly all living systems. Fungi provide a key to understanding the planet on which we live, and the ways we think, feel, and behave.
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What listeners say about Letters to a Young Scientist
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- Catherine Puma
- 12-27-20
Short Advice Series from Famous Scientist
In this part-discussion of science careers, part-memoir, Dr. Edward O. Wilson offers advice and support for young scientists. I loved listening to this, as it is pretty much exactly what I was searching for, and as a budding scientific researcher myself, it was exactly what I needed to hear at this point in my career.
Edward O. Wilson is famous for his expertise in ants, co-founding the terminology "Evolutionary Biology", and with MacArthur describing the Theory of Island Biogeography. In addition to the advice he gives to young scientists, Wilson frames his wisdom through stories of his youth, early career, research triumphs and toils, and experience as a mentor. It was so refreshing to hear of his exploits and extremely heartening to hear such a renown scientist speak about the potential and encouragement of new professionals without being patronizing or overly judgmental.
This is a great short read for anyone in the sciences or STEM career, whether pre-science career, early career, or even later in their career. I think there is a lot to gain from this, and is good food for thought. I am so glad I listened to this at this point in my life, while I am in graduate school studying Tropical Marine Ecosystem Management, and I can see myself coming back to this in order to re-read its wise words some day.
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- Amazon Customer
- 08-16-19
odd voice changes
It was very obvious that there was a second reader chiming in to complete some statements and trying to match the voice of the main reader. While it wasn't offputting or bad it pulled me from story briefly every time.
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- Ryan sweet
- 01-04-23
great read for someone who is questioning
recently switched my major to biology and this made me feel so much better about that decision
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- Katie
- 01-21-17
Inspiring and thought provoking
Dry details but overall reassuring for someone questioning whether or not to pursue a career in science.
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3 people found this helpful
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- jc 550m
- 12-13-19
great candid guidance to have a rewarding career
content and candidness are great . very good to listen to on way to work
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1 person found this helpful
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- Anonymous User
- 09-04-18
Genuinely changed and enriched my life and career
I cannot put into words what this book and it's excellent narration means to people like or even unlike myself.
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- Diego Zárrate
- 10-23-17
love it
Great book for either beginning or continuing biology and ecology professionals. a lot of great advices to move forward.
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2 people found this helpful
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- History Lover
- 07-09-18
Very pronunciation
I absolutely loved the book, but the reading left a lot to be desired. Ecosystem is not pronounced Echosystem. There were a number of other similar words that were grossly mispronounced.
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- deanna taylor
- 02-24-20
Inspiring and Motivating
So many times I've said " I wish I could absorb all the knowledge and wisdom of influential people in science". This book provides that opportunity
and gives some amazing advise to young scientist as well as to seasoned scientist. In the beginning the narrator is hard to understand but by the middle of the book he does become easier to understand.
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1 person found this helpful
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- Abhigyan
- 01-13-17
Good for budding researchers
Gives you a good framework of researching , as well as an interesting read for anyone amateur.
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