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Life Ascending
- The Ten Great Inventions of Evolution
- Narrated by: Graeme Malcolm
- Length: 13 hrs and 7 mins
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Publisher's summary
Where does DNA come from? What is consciousness? How did the eye evolve? Drawing on a treasure trove of new scientific knowledge, Nick Lane expertly reconstructs evolution's history by describing its 10 greatest inventions - from sex and warmth to death - resulting in a stunning account of nature's ingenuity.
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Why is the world the way it is? How did we get here? Does everything happen for a reason, or are some things left to chance? Philosophers and theologians have pondered these questions for millennia, but startling scientific discoveries over the past half century are revealing that we live in a world driven by chance. A Series of Fortunate Events tells the story of the awesome power of chance and how it is the surprising source of all the beauty and diversity in the living world.
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We are for a short time.
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By: Sean B. Carroll
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How to Build a Dinosaur
- Extinction Doesn't Have to Be Forever
- By: Jack Horner, James Gorman
- Narrated by: Patrick Lawlor
- Length: 6 hrs and 36 mins
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In movies, in novels, in comic strips, and on television, we've all seen dinosaurs - or at least somebody's educated guess of what they would look like. But what if it were possible to build, or grow, a real dinosaur without finding ancient DNA? Jack Horner, the scientist who advised Steven Spielberg on the blockbuster film Jurassic Park and a pioneer in bringing paleontology into the 21st century, teams up with the editor of the New York Times's Science Times section to reveal exactly what's in store.
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Good book but misplaced title
- By Robert on 06-19-15
By: Jack Horner, and others
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Life Unfolding
- How the Human Body Creates Itself
- By: Jamie A. Davies
- Narrated by: Napoleon Ryan
- Length: 9 hrs and 56 mins
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Where did I come from? Why do I have two arms but just one head? How is my left leg the same size as my right one? Why are the fingerprints of identical twins not identical? How did my brain learn to learn? Why must I die? Questions like these remain biology's deepest and most ancient challenges. They force us to confront a fundamental biological problem: How can something as large and complex as a human body organize itself from the simplicity of a fertilized egg?
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Fascinating Biology ; Distracting Narration
- By Tim on 03-01-15
By: Jamie A. Davies
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Origins
- The Scientific Story of Creation
- By: Jim Baggott
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What is the nature of the material world? How does it work? What is the universe and how was it formed? What is life? Where do we come from and how did we evolve? How and why do we think? What does it mean to be human? How do we know? There are many different versions of our creation story. This book tells the version according to modern science. It is a unique account, starting at the Big Bang and travelling right up to the emergence of humans as conscious intelligent beings, 13.8 billion years later.
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Interesting book, but WOW, the narrator ...
- By UH on 01-10-17
By: Jim Baggott
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13 Things That Don't Make Sense
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- By: Michael Brooks
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- Length: 8 hrs and 58 mins
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Science starts to get interesting when things don't make sense. Science's best-kept secret is that there are experimental results and reliable data that the most brilliant scientists can neither explain nor dismiss. If history is any precedent, we should look to today's inexplicable results to forecast the future of science. Michael Brooks heads to the scientific frontier to meet 13 modern-day anomalies and discover tomorrow's breakthroughs.
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10 interesting chapters-read epiloge first
- By Stephen on 06-10-09
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A Little History of the World
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E. H. Gombrich's world history, an international best seller now available in English for the first time, is a text dominated not by dates and facts but by the sweep of experience across the centuries, a guide to humanity's achievements, and an acute witness to its frailties.
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an enlightening book; very well read
- By A.B.Oxford on 06-03-06
By: E. H. Gombrich
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I, Mammal
- By: Liam Drew
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A list of the attributes that define a mammal is a ragbag of things - fur, live birth, three bones in the middle ear, a brain whose two halves are robustly joined together.... But this curious collection of features contain the roots of all the biology that makes us what we are: monkeys with massive brains who parent extensively, enjoy sport and think lots. Which is to say, what makes us mammals makes us human.
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Who knew?
- By Fitmen on 04-25-18
By: Liam Drew
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Why Evolution Is True
- By: Jerry A. Coyne
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Why evolution is more than just a theory: it is a fact. In all the current highly publicized debates about creationism and its descendant "intelligent design", there is an element of the controversy that is rarely mentioned: the evidence, the empirical truth of evolution by natural selection.
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As great as everyone says it is
- By Joseph on 12-01-10
By: Jerry A. Coyne
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Flawed fundamental assumptions, good function rvw
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Renowned neuroscientist Joseph LeDoux digs into the natural history of life on earth to provide a new perspective on the similarities between us and our ancestors in deep time. This pause-resisting survey of the whole of terrestrial evolution sheds new light on how nervous systems evolved in animals, how the brain developed, and what it means to be human. In The Deep History of Ourselves, LeDoux argues that the key to understanding human behavior lies in viewing evolution through the prism of the first living organisms.
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Oversold
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What listeners say about Life Ascending
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- Blaine Byrum
- 11-20-23
Captivating
Great depth, wonderful explanation, I quite enjoyed the descriptor level, historical guidance, character sketches, and scientific defense.
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- Lucas
- 02-17-11
technical but enlightening
The most technical of the many science/biology books I've read to date--not for those who hated biology class.
It was particularly good on the theories origins of life/DNA, photosynthesis, and eukaryotic cells. Not so great on consciousness (I think it's hard to make a case that that is one of the greatest "inventions" of evolution from the overall picture of life) and death (really a chapter about how we can avoid the degenerations/infirmations of old age--SPOILER: eat less).
I thought I had, at last, a science book that doesn't try to persuade us that evolution is true but, alas, in the final chapter the author made his pitch. It was a powerful one, though, so I'll excuse it.
Definitely moments where I started to drift off but, overall, this is a good read for those who love biology.
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6 people found this helpful
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- ES
- 02-16-16
excellent
Any additional comments?
Lane provides an excellent and enjoyable narrative. It contains interesting and informative facts on evolution and genes in an easily understood manner.
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- Origin and Insertion
- 01-31-19
Excellent treatment of life's drivers
Lane does a great job organizing and discussing important events in life's history. If you love biology, then you will find this to be a great synthesis of big ideas.
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- nyquistJack
- 08-29-19
Absolutely Amazing
I loved this book. After nearly 2 decades of Physics being my science learning of choice I needed a change. After a particularly interesting Mindscape podcast episode with a physicist turned biologist, biology is what called out to me.
Before this book my only biology knowledge came from HS and a few YouTube videos here and there. I wanted a book that got into the details on a variety of biological topics as a starting off point. And on that this books seriously delivered.
Make no mistake, this book is dense. I had to listen to a chapter or even part of a chapter and then go watch YouTube videos and read articles to better understand what I just learned. But that is what I wanted. Biology is an enormous discipline and having this book gave me various grounding points so I could get started which is exactly what I needed.
I feel in the last month I’ve gone from a total biology noob to a biology novice. I cannot wait to learn more. As soon as I am done with this review I plan on listening to the entire book again, this time armed with considerable more knowledge before but undoubtedly i will find more detail that will send me on many more learning adventures.
As for the narration, once I bumped it to 1.25x speed it was perfect. I swear they slowed it down .25 as nobody talks THAT slow.
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- R. David Mintz
- 08-25-16
Remarkable book!
This is a truly remarkable piece of nonfiction. It is beautifully written, very well researched,and extremely well narrated. A truly fascinating read from start to finish.
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- Tristan
- 04-16-17
Brilliant writing + lapses of impenetrable writing
In its best moments, this book is beautiful and actually quite funny, delivered just right by Graeme Malcolm's wizardly British accent. It felt like hanging out with Newton in his study, listening to him reveal the secrets of the world.
And then, in moments, Lane seems to give up on any pretence of speaking to a wider audience, using terminology few outside of biology will follow. I found it baffling, because elsewhere, he takes such care to explain things in terms anyone could grasp. It's unclear to me whether he truly didn't realize what concepts others wouldn't know, or whether he just got lazy in places. From reading reviews of his other books, this seems to be an ongoing problem he has.
Unfortunately, these moments are most common in the earlier chapters, when he's discussing metabolism, the origin of life and photosynthesis. My advice? Just let the tangled bits glide past you, because there is a TON of fascinating material throughout the book, and the latter chapters offer few hiccups.
I do absolutely recommend this book, despite the caveats. Learning about the origin of life alone was worth the price, and the chapter on eyes is brilliant. The section on consciousness is also a nice speculative bonus.
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2 people found this helpful
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- Rakkhi
- 08-23-19
Well worth the listen
I enjoyed his next book on the more detailed look at the origin of life more but this is a great overview of that and other interesting developments in evolution including muscle, hot blood, consciousness and death. Well worth your time
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- Tibor
- 10-15-21
Great book !
Enjoyed this book a lot. Gave me a glimpse of how life may have originated, the good and bad part of having warm blood, and the advantages of sex and why we do not live forever. Highly recommended.
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- Dann
- 10-12-10
Good stuff, but ...
REALLY good info, fascinating expose' of the lines of creation, but like sitting in a boring classroom with a stuffy teacher.
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2 people found this helpful