
Natural Acts
A Sidelong View of Science and Nature
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Narrated by:
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Patrick Lawlor
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By:
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David Quammen
About this listen
"Lively writing about science and nature depends less on the offering of good answers, I think, than on the offering of good questions," said David Quammen in the original introduction to Natural Acts. For more than two decades, he has stuck to that credo. In this updated version of Natural Acts, curiosity leads him from New Mexico to Romania, from the Congo to the Amazon, asking questions about mosquitoes (what are their redeeming merits?), dinosaurs (how did they change the life of a dyslexic Vietnam vet?), and cloning (can it save endangered species?).
This revised and expanded edition best-loved "Natural Acts" columns, which first appeared in Outside magazine in the early 1980s, and includes recent pieces such as "Planet of Weeds," an influential new Natural Acts is an eye-opening journey that will please both Quammen fans and newcomers to his work.
©1985, 2008 David Quammen (P)2022 TantorListeners also enjoyed...
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Story
David Quammen's book, The Song of the Dodo, is a brilliant, stirring work, breathtaking in its scope, far-reaching in its message - a crucial book in precarious times, which radically alters the way in which we understand the natural world and our place in that world. It's also a book full of entertainment and wonders. In The Song of the Dodo, we follow Quammen's keen intellect through the ideas, theories, and experiments of prominent naturalists of the last two centuries.
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Extensive and Entertaining
- By Thylacine on 07-26-21
By: David Quammen
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What Evolution Is
- By: Ernst Mayr
- Narrated by: Henry Strozier
- Length: 11 hrs and 39 mins
- Unabridged
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At once a spirited defense of Darwinian explanations of biology and an elegant primer on evolution for the general listener, What Evolution Is poses the questions at the heart of evolutionary theory and considers how our improved understanding of evolution has affected the viewpoints and values of modern man.
By: Ernst Mayr
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The Secret Lives of Bats
- My Adventures with the World's Most Misunderstood Mammals
- By: Merlin Tuttle
- Narrated by: Sean Runnette
- Length: 8 hrs and 42 mins
- Unabridged
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A lifetime of adventures with bats around the world reveals why these special and imperiled creatures should be protected rather than feared.
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Very Disappointing
- By R. Klein on 07-31-23
By: Merlin Tuttle
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The Trees in My Forest
- By: Bernd Heinrich
- Narrated by: Tom Perkins
- Length: 5 hrs and 48 mins
- Unabridged
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In a book destined to become a classic, biologist and acclaimed nature writer Bernd Heinrich takes listeners on an eye-opening journey through the hidden life of a forest. A lifetime observer of the natural world shares his vast knowledge and reflections on the trees of the Northeast woodlands and the rhythms of their seasons, from the DNA contained in an apple seed to the great branches beyond reach.
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Trees, woods, forests, pines and apples, and Maine
- By Lynn Spann Bowditch on 08-30-24
By: Bernd Heinrich
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The Tangled Tree
- A Radical New History of Life
- By: David Quammen
- Narrated by: Jacques Roy
- Length: 13 hrs and 48 mins
- Unabridged
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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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The Sea Around Us
- By: Rachel Carson
- Narrated by: Kaiulani Lee
- Length: 9 hrs and 9 mins
- Unabridged
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Published in 1951, The Sea Around Us is one of the most remarkably successful books ever written about the natural world. This classic work remains as fresh today as when it first appeared. Carson's writing teems with stunning, memorable images - the newly formed Earth cooling beneath an endlessly overcast sky, the centuries of nonstop rain that created the oceans, giant squids battling sperm whales hundreds of fathoms below the surface, and incredibly powerful tides moving 100 billion tons of water daily in the Bay of Fundy.
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A Historiographical Gem
- By Reggie on 03-10-19
By: Rachel Carson
Bite sized stories
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