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On the Origin of Species
- Narrated by: Bill DeWees
- Length: 15 hrs and 56 mins
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Publisher's summary
Originally named On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life, On the Origin of Species, by Charles Darwin, was first published in 1859. This scientific writing, which was considered to be the groundwork of evolutionary biology, presented the theory that species developed over a line of originations through a method of natural selection. It imparted evidence that the variety of life resulted from a common descent via a branching model of evolution. Darwin incorporated facts that he had collected on the Beagle mission in the 1830s and his succeeding findings from research, correspondence, and experimentation.
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The Galápagos
- A Natural History
- By: Henry Nicholls
- Narrated by: James Adams
- Length: 5 hrs and 30 mins
- Unabridged
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The Galapagos were once known to the sailors and pirates who encountered them as Las Encantadas: the enchanted islands, home to exotic creatures and dramatic volcanic scenery. In The Galapagos, science writer Henry Nicholls offers a lively natural and human history of the archipelago, charting its evolution from deserted wilderness to scientific resource (made famous by Charles Darwin) and global ecotourism hot spot.
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Thought-Provoking
- By Jean on 10-23-18
By: Henry Nicholls
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The Beak of the Finch
- A Story of Evolution in Our Time
- By: Jonathan Weiner
- Narrated by: Victor Bevine
- Length: 12 hrs and 14 mins
- Unabridged
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Rosemary and Peter Grant and those assisting them have spend 20 years on Daphne Major, an island in the Galapagos, studying natural selection. They recognize each individual bird on the island, when there are 400 at the time of the author's visit or when there are over a thousand. They have observed about 20 generations of finches - continuously.Jonathan Weiner follows these scientists as they watch Darwin's finches and come up with a new understanding of life itself.
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Fascinating in-depth look at evolution in action
- By Philip on 05-15-11
By: Jonathan Weiner
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Masters of the Planet
- The Search for Our Human Origins
- By: Ian Tattersall
- Narrated by: Bob Souer
- Length: 8 hrs and 43 mins
- Unabridged
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Fifty thousand years ago - merely a blip in evolutionary time - our Homo sapiens ancestors were competing for existence with several other human species, just as their precursors had done for millions of years. Yet something about our species distinguished it from the pack, and ultimately led to its survival while the rest became extinct. Just what was it that allowed Homo sapiens to become masters of the planet? Ian Tattersall, curator emeritus at the American Museum of Natural History, takes us deep into the fossil record to uncover what made humans so special.
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Great Book, Some Sloppy Editing
- By DB on 11-23-20
By: Ian Tattersall
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Domesticated
- Evolution in a Man-Made World
- By: Richard C. Francis
- Narrated by: Eric Jason Martin
- Length: 13 hrs and 6 mins
- Unabridged
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Without our domesticated plants and animals, human civilization as we know it would not exist. We would still be living at subsistence level as hunter-gatherers if not for domestication. It is no accident that the cradle of civilization - the Middle East - is where sheep, goats, pigs, cattle, and cats commenced their fatefully intimate associations with humans.
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Well, what did you expect?
- By Mark on 03-25-16
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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
- Unabridged
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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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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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The Voyage of the Beagle
- By: Charles Darwin
- Narrated by: Barnaby Edwards
- Length: 25 hrs and 17 mins
- Unabridged
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I hate every wave of the ocean', the seasick Charles Darwin wrote to his family during his five-year voyage on the H.M.S. Beagle. It was this world-wide journey, however, that launched the scientists career.
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High Adventure - Well Written
- By wbiro on 09-16-17
By: Charles Darwin
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Letters to a Young Scientist
- By: Edward O. Wilxon
- Narrated by: Joe Barrett
- Length: 4 hrs and 57 mins
- Unabridged
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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.
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Long on biography, short on advice
- By A. Mandelin on 08-02-18
By: Edward O. Wilxon
What listeners say about On the Origin of Species
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- Gary
- 05-13-13
Reads as well as any modern popular science book
I've probably listened to and rated over 15 books about evolution over the last two years, but I was always hesitant to read the granddaddy of them all. I should not have been and am glad I did for the following reasons,
1) The book reads as well as any of the good popular science books available on audible. It is written as if his attended audience is for a 13 year old. That's how good of a writer Darwin is.
2) I had obtained a google book version, but couldn't bring myself to read it, and I had obtained a free audio version floating around the net, but this audio version is professionally read and doesn't suffer at all from the narrator.
3) The book lays out a very complicated argument in 13 basically independent chapters. Each chapter by itself is enough to convince the listener of the fact of evolution by natural selection. The author is very smooth at telling you what he's going to tell you, then tell you, and then explain to you what he has just told you.
4) The book is a guidebook on how to lay out an argument and convince others to your viewpoint. He makes sure that he fairly presents criticism that could attack his theory and refutes it masterfully.
5) My favorite reason for having read this book is that my smugness index has gone up. When I come across people who haven't read the book and deny the scientific fact of evolution I can now say that I have listened to the book and smugly add statements like "even a thirteen year old can understand evolution, haven't you even read 'On the Origin of Species'".
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10 people found this helpful
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- G.S. Muse
- 07-22-20
Dated, but good.
There are serious flaws in Darwin’s theory, including in the modern version. He makes a huge leap in logic, claiming that Natural Selection can explain the whole of what we see on Earth. But the onus is on him and his followers to prove such a claim, not on opponents to disprove it. To this day, there are many biologists who debate the validity of this claim.
That said, the way Darwin presents his argument is refreshing. He is usually tentative in his claims, and he urges readers to investigate all sides of this issue. Beyond that, he is very interesting to read as a naturalist. I especially liked his thoughts on migration and on how living things colonize new regions.
This book is an excellent read for anyone.
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- Red Diaper Baby
- 05-26-15
Very inadequate narrator
Having paid for an audiobook which is in the public domain and can be heard from volunteer readers on the web, I expected a really excellent narrator in this version. I feel quite cheated. The reader is passable when he understands what he is reading, but he is unfamiliar with nineteenth century British English and sometimes trips over things that differ from modern American.
More importantly, he is unfamiliar with biological terminology, which he often mispronounces. I was stimulated to write this review by an outrageous howler (which he did not repeat the next time the word occurred, to give him credit).
He read "quadruped" - not a particularly esoteric word - with two syllables, as "quad-roopt" Goodness knows what he was thinking! "I quadrupe, you quadrupe, he quadrupes. . . " What on earth would that mean?
As for the book itself, it is charming and informative, as I expected. Wish I could say the same for the narrator.
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2 people found this helpful
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- Gianna Aiello
- 08-25-17
Needs Diagrams
The performance was great, but Audible should try to do attachments or something so you have the option to look at the diagrams it mentions.
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- David
- 08-06-15
Do more people talk about Darwin than have read
I think the first thing to recognize is all the handicaps Darwin worked under:
Lack of radioactive dating
No knowledge of DNA and only a crude understand of inheritance (genetics)
Limited geologic data (It was a relatively young science)
Limited fossil record (speaking particularly of how much has been discovered and collected since Darwin)
No understand of plate tectonics.
So given all that it's easy to forgive Darwin where he was subsequently found wrong in some detail. I marvel at how rich an understanding genetics existed during the time, without take the next step to understand evolution itself. I also deeply appreciate all the experiments that Darwin tried to best understand how some plants and animals might have migrated to islands, etc.
This is an important book in the history of Science, and is quite wonderful.
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- Thor
- 03-17-18
Great, but this is an abridged version!
I don't know how abridged, I just know they removed "by the creator" from the last poem of the book.
Which worries me, what else did they remove /edit?
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- Barry L. Wolfe
- 11-11-11
This is the 1859 British edition.
This is the 1859 British edition, and as such it is the second best edition. The 1860 British edition is slightly better in that it contains some insignificant, but non-substantive, corrections. However, the 1860 British edition is probably not available as an audio book. The editions of 1861, 1866, 1869, and 1872 are all inferior. In them Darwin made changes and expansions in an effort to meet the objections that arose during those times. The modifications expanded the book and clouded the argument. Since most of the objections that were raised would be regarded as silly today, Darwin's arguments against them are of interest for social history, but not for Darwin's theory.
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32 people found this helpful
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- Dorene Kavanagh
- 09-23-12
Good science, embarrassed for the narrator
What made the experience of listening to On the Origin of Species the most enjoyable?
It is thrilling to consider Darwin's conclusions about life, without the benefit of knowing about DNA, epigenetics, gene linkage, Mendelian genetics, and so on. He was right about so many things.
Who was your favorite character and why?
The pigeons! Just kidding.
How did the narrator detract from the book?
He mispronounced so many words that I am embarrassed for him. There are word substitutions that make the somewhat challenging Victorian prose impossible. That someone can get paid for such unprofessional is a disappointment.
Any additional comments?
Surely there is a better reading of this book out there? Wouldn't it be cool if the most famous biologists would do a recording? One chapter by E. O. Wilson, another by that really nice Darwin scholar/Englishman at Harvard, obviously Dawkins, James Watson...
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9 people found this helpful
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- Luna Fortuna
- 05-11-16
Get the abridged version.
First things first. This book has quite a few charts and pictures that are very handy when reading the paper copy, that just don't translate to a spoken format. It's at best boring and at worst confusing, and I have a degree in biology.
Not to mention, the original published text is over 150 years old. That's some seriously archaic language going on at times. Bill DeWees does a great job enunciating individual words, but the flow of the sentences is missing. The dude sounds like he's reading side effects off the back of a laxative box. Much of the meaning of the book is lost in translation. So just don't bother, and get the abridged copy.
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1 person found this helpful
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- David
- 06-20-16
Entertaining and informative
The narrator wasn't that great he mispronounced some words but other than that it was a great experience.
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