Otherlands
A Journey Through Earth's Extinct Worlds
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Narrated by:
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Adetomiwa Edun
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By:
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Thomas Halliday
About this listen
2022 James Cropper Wainwright Prize for Nature Writing, Short-listed
“Immersive . . . bracingly ambitious . . . rewinds the story of life on Earth—from the mammoth steppe of the last Ice Age to the dawn of multicellular creatures over 500 million years ago.”—The Economist
LONGLISTED FOR THE BAILLIE GIFFORD PRIZE • “One of those rare books that’s both deeply informative and daringly imaginative.”—Elizabeth Kolbert, author of Under a White Sky
ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR: The New Yorker, Prospect (UK)
The past is past, but it does leave clues, and Thomas Halliday has used cutting-edge science to decipher them more completely than ever before. In Otherlands, Halliday makes sixteen fossil sites burst to life.
This book is an exploration of the Earth as it used to exist, the changes that have occurred during its history, and the ways that life has found to adapt―or not. It takes us from the savannahs of Pliocene Kenya to watch a python chase a group of australopithecines into an acacia tree; to a cliff overlooking the salt pans of the empty basin of what will be the Mediterranean Sea just as water from the Miocene Atlantic Ocean spills in; into the tropical forests of Eocene Antarctica; and under the shallow pools of Ediacaran Australia, where we glimpse the first microbial life.
Otherlands also offers us a vast perspective on the current state of the planet. The thought that something as vast as the Great Barrier Reef, for example, with all its vibrant diversity, might one day soon be gone sounds improbable. But the fossil record shows us that this sort of wholesale change is not only possible but has repeatedly happened throughout Earth history.
Even as he operates on this broad canvas, Halliday brings us up close to the intricate relationships that defined these lost worlds. In novelistic prose that belies the breadth of his research, he illustrates how ecosystems are formed; how species die out and are replaced; and how species migrate, adapt, and collaborate. It is a breathtaking achievement: a surprisingly emotional narrative about the persistence of life, the fragility of seemingly permanent ecosystems, and the scope of deep time, all of which have something to tell us about our current crisis.
©2022 Thomas Halliday (P)2022 Random House AudioListeners also enjoyed...
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Critic reviews
“A poet among paleontologists . . . Think of a series of immense and immersive museum dioramas, with no glass separating you from the action. . . . The narrative becomes shockingly real and immediate, as individual dramas and entire, vibrant panoramas unfold in what feels like real time.”—The Wall Street Journal
“Written with gusto and bravado . . . Otherlands is a verbal feast. You feel like you are there on the Mammoth Steppe, some 20,000 years ago, as frigid winds blow off the glacial front.”—Steve Brusatte, Scientific American
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- Narrated by: Brett Barry
- Length: 6 hrs and 49 mins
- Unabridged
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Ian Tattersall, a highly esteemed figure in the fields of anthropology, archaeology, and paleontology, leads a fascinating tour of the history of life and the evolution of human beings. Starting at the very beginning, Tattersall examines patterns of change in the biosphere over time, and the correlations of biological events with physical changes in the Earth's environment.
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great summary of where we are with understanding
- By david on 06-25-11
By: Ian Tattersall
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Atlas of a Lost World
- By: Craig Childs
- Narrated by: Craig Childs
- Length: 9 hrs and 10 mins
- Unabridged
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From the author of Apocalyptic Planet, an unsparing, vivid, revelatory travelogue through prehistory that traces the arrival of the First People in North America 20,000 years ago and the artifacts that enable us to imagine their lives and fates. This book upends our notions of where these people came from and who they were.
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Blaaaa
- By Josh NJ on 07-26-18
By: Craig Childs
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The Wild Places
- By: Robert Macfarlane
- Narrated by: Simon Bubb
- Length: 9 hrs and 42 mins
- Unabridged
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Are there any genuinely wild places left in Britain and Ireland? Or have we tarmacked, farmed and built ourselves out of wildness? In his vital, bewitching, inspiring classic, Robert Macfarlane sets out in search of the wildness that remains.
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Magical
- By Jennifer on 01-27-22
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Cro-Magnon
- How the Ice Age Gave Birth to the First Modern Humans
- By: Brian Fagan
- Narrated by: James Langton
- Length: 9 hrs and 52 mins
- Unabridged
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Best-selling author Brian Fagan brings early humans out of the deep freeze with his trademark mix of erudition, cutting-edge science, and vivid storytelling. Cro-Magnon reveals human society in its infancy, facing enormous environmental challenges - including a rival species of humans, the Neanderthals. For ten millennia, Cro-Magnons lived side by side with Neanderthals, an encounter that Fagan fills with drama.
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Fact and fiction
- By Paul on 08-12-10
By: Brian Fagan
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A Naturalist at Large
- The Best Essays of Bernd Heinrich
- By: Bernd Heinrich
- Narrated by: Rick Adamson
- Length: 8 hrs and 19 mins
- Unabridged
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From one of the finest scientists and writers of our time comes an engaging record of a life spent in close observation of the natural world, one that has yielded marvelous, mind-altering insight and discoveries. In essays that span several decades, Bernd Heinrich finds himself at his beloved camp in Maine, plays host to annoying visitors from Europe (the cluster fly) and more helpful guests from Asia (ladybugs), and unravels the far-reaching ecological consequences of elephants in Botswana bruising mopane trees.
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Listen and See the World Anew!
- By Thoughtful Learner on 06-03-18
By: Bernd Heinrich
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Gods, Wasps and Stranglers
- The Secret History and Redemptive Future of Fig Trees
- By: Mike Shanahan
- Narrated by: James Cameron Stewart
- Length: 4 hrs and 42 mins
- Unabridged
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They are trees of life and trees of knowledge. They are wish-fulfillers, rain forest royalty, more precious than gold. They are the fig trees, and they have affected humanity in profound but little-known ways. Gods, Wasps and Stranglers tells their amazing story. Fig trees fed our prehuman ancestors, influenced diverse cultures, and played key roles in the dawn of civilization.
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Incredible research in a wonderful story
- By Alonsa Guevara on 11-24-22
By: Mike Shanahan
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The Ancestor's Tale
- A Pilgrimage to the Dawn of Evolution
- By: Richard Dawkins
- Narrated by: Richard Dawkins, Lalla Ward
- Length: 8 hrs and 55 mins
- Abridged
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In The Ancestor's Tale, evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins offers a masterwork: an exhilarating reverse tour through evolution, from present-day humans back to the microbial beginnings of life four billion years ago. Throughout the journey, Dawkins spins entertaining, insightful stories and sheds light on topics such as speciation, sexual selection, and extinction. The Ancestor's Tale is at once an essential education in evolutionary theory and riveting in its telling.
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Please do an unabridged version!
- By MovieExpertise on 09-29-16
By: Richard Dawkins
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Feathers
- The Evolution of a Natural Miracle
- By: Thor Hanson
- Narrated by: Andy Ingalls
- Length: 8 hrs and 20 mins
- Unabridged
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Feathers are an evolutionary marvel: Aerodynamic, insulating, beguiling. They date back more than 100 million years. Yet their story has never been fully told. In Feathers, biologist Thor Hanson details a sweeping natural history, as feathers have been used to fly, protect, attract, and adorn through time and place. Applying the research of paleontologists, ornithologists, biologists, engineers, and even art historians, Hanson asks: What are feathers? How did they evolve? What do they mean to us?
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Fantastic Science and Fun
- By Chris Reich on 12-28-14
By: Thor Hanson
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The Tree
- A Natural History of What Trees Are, How They Live, and Why They Matter
- By: Colin Tudge
- Narrated by: Enn Reitel
- Length: 19 hrs and 52 mins
- Unabridged
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There are redwoods in California that were ancient by the time Columbus first landed and pines still alive that germinated around the time humans invented writing. There are Douglas firs as tall as skyscrapers and a banyan tree in Calcutta as big as a football field. From the tallest to the smallest, trees inspire wonder in all of us, and in The Tree, Colin Tudge travels around the world - throughout the United States, the Costa Rican rain forest, Panama and Brazil, India, New Zealand, China, and most of Europe - bringing to life stories and facts about the trees around us.
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Not the book described in the Audible summary
- By E. Miller on 04-28-17
By: Colin Tudge
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The Cabaret of Plants
- Forty Thousand Years of Plant Life and the Human Imagination
- By: Richard Mabey
- Narrated by: Ralph Lister
- Length: 11 hrs and 14 mins
- Unabridged
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A rich, sweeping, and compelling work of botanical history, The Cabaret of Plants explores dozens of plant species that for millennia have challenged our imaginations, awoken our wonder, and upturned our ideas about history, science, beauty, and belief. Going back to the beginnings of human history, Richard Mabey shows how flowers, trees, and plants have been central to human experience not just as sources of food and medicine but as objects of worship, actors in creation myths, and symbols of war and peace, life and death.
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Can't wait to listen to again!
- By hyacinthgirl on 12-27-16
By: Richard Mabey
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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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First Peoples in a New World
- Colonizing Ice Age America
- By: David J. Meltzer
- Narrated by: Christopher Prince
- Length: 11 hrs
- Abridged
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More than 12,000 years ago, in one of the greatest triumphs of prehistory, humans colonized North America, a continent that was then truly a new world. Just when and how they did so has been one of the most perplexing and controversial questions in archaeology.
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Last Gasp of American Anthropological Orthodoxy
- By Thomas66 on 01-05-17
By: David J. Meltzer
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The Nature of Nature
- Why We Need the Wild
- By: Enric Sala
- Narrated by: Will Damron
- Length: 6 hrs and 22 mins
- Unabridged
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In this inspiring manifesto, an internationally renowned ecologist makes a clear case for why protecting nature is our best health insurance, and why it makes economic sense.
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mediocre
- By Anthony Dimaggio on 01-16-24
By: Enric Sala
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In the early 17th century, Galileo broke free from the hold of ancient Platonic and Aristotelian philosophy. He drastically changed the framework through which we view the natural world when he asserted that we should base our theory of reality on what we can observe rather than pure thought. In the process, he invented what we would come to call science. This set the stage for all the breakthroughs that followed - from Kepler to Newton to Einstein.
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Provocative Argument
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Mother Tongue
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Mother Tongue is a historical investigation of feminist language and thought, from the dawn of Old English to the present day. Dr. Jenni Nuttall guides readers through the evolution of words that we have used to describe female bodies, menstruation, women’s sexuality, the consequences of male violence, childbirth, women’s paid and unpaid work, and gender. Along the way, she challenges our modern language’s ability to insightfully articulate women’s shared experiences by examining the long-forgotten words once used in English for female sexual and reproductive organs.
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Outstanding on all counts!
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What listeners say about Otherlands
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- Michael Needham
- 05-03-22
Good but dense
Great premise for a book on ancient ecosystems, and well written. Pretty dense for an audiobook, however.
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- William A. See III
- 08-15-22
Great writing. A wonderful listen.
This is a great work. Great writing and storytelling. The selection of a narrator with a Indian accent is questionable. The voice of narrator doesn't seem to fit the story and is often a distraction.
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- James E. Pfeffer
- 02-19-23
I Hope That I Was Up To The Challenge
I adored the work. I call books such as this a “Neutron Star.” The author packs almost an inconceivable-amount of information into 10 hours, or so.
The narrator was clear, engaging, and quite pleasant to hear.
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- A B
- 10-23-22
Powerful, beautifully written, and incredibly relevant for today
I have never read a book that so brilliantly connects previous mass extinction events throughout our planet’s history with the major environmental challenges the earth is facing today. While that alone would make this an incredibly topical book that everyone should read, its incredibly evocative depictions of bygone worlds is truly a pleasure to read in its own right. While not mincing any words on the tremendous challenges that the world currently faces, the comparison to previous epochs provides a powerful anecdote to the despair and fatalism that many have embraced in response to present climate change and mass extinction crises - unlike every other mass extinction event in the planet’s history, this is the first where the driver of mass extinction (us) has the capacity to recognize and change its actions in time to prevent the even more catastrophic events to come if we don’t change our relationship with the planet. This is a must-read book for anyone interested in past who also cares about our present and the potential futures yet to come.
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- catherine
- 09-08-23
Fantastic for all readers
I was worried this book would be way too niche for me to keep up with, but it was a great introduction (and very thoroughly researched) to the world of our planet’s yesteryear.
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- jd
- 01-17-24
perceived enthusiasm of both author and reader. Convergence of prehistoric science with current state of the planet.
as a visually impaired retired USACE Wetlands Ecologist with wide ranging scientific interests, I found the story well written and detailed. Some clarification of terms and pronunciation would have been useful for listeners not used to UK accents.
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- Adam
- 05-15-22
Great Read
I really liked the snapshots of life played out by the author, really puts you there back in time.
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- Ian K O'Malley
- 09-20-22
Extinction freaks read up!
This is a unique book in that travels back in time from current to past...well organized and full of fun facts, I enjoyed the travel past through long gone worlds that impact us today... well written and very useful in comprehension of past world environments... loved this book!!
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- Amazon Customer
- 08-09-22
Stunning descriptions of life and landscapes long gone
It’s tough to find hopeful words in much of the literature covering climate change these days, but this beautifully written and read audiobook sprinkles hope throughout many long-dead worlds as if seeding the foundation that would eventually allow for the evolution of humankind. And even though we’re staring out over the precipice of our own specie’s demise, there is a thread that runs throughout all of the iterations of earth’s worlds that is at the very least positive for the continuation of life if not full of solutions for changing our current trajectory.
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- Brooke
- 03-04-24
Block off time
I thought this book was ok on my morning commute. But really enjoyed it when the internet bricked one night and I was able to listen long enough to really get into it. So you might want to listen in longer stretches instead of quick bites.
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