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The Beak of the Finch
- A Story of Evolution in Our Time
- Narrated by: Victor Bevine
- Length: 12 hrs and 14 mins
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Publisher's summary
Pulitzer Prize, General Nonfiction, 1995
Rosemary and Peter Grant and those assisting them have spent 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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Editorial reviews
The subtitle of The Beak of the Finch — A Story of Evolution in Our Time — is the vital thematic thread of this groundbreaking Pulitzer Prize-winning book, rendered into audio by Victor Bevine’s masterful narrative performance. “Charles Darwin never witnessed natural selection in action,” states the author, Jonathan Weiner. But Princeton University professors Peter and Rosemary Grant have seen the evidence, in flourishing abundance, during their 20-year study of finches on the Galapagos Island of Daphne Major. The Grants and their assistants did so with the very finches that famously captured Darwin’s attention during his five-week exploration on the Galapagos Islands. “Evolution in our time” means that wherever there is life, the force that drives evolution, natural selection, is everywhere and always present. Evolutionary changes thus occur at a much more rapid pace than had been envisaged by Darwin, indeed, than had been thought by the Grants’ contemporary scientists. The stunning and startling beauty of this book is achieved through the convergence of an interesting collection of scientists, newly discovered findings about finches, great writing, and the extraordinary, ultra-exotic island of Daphne Major.
Victor Bevine narrates with a powerful, expressive voice, always actively modulating with the flow of the text, shifting his narrative delivery and tone with shifts of meaning, stress, and emphases, capped with a fluent on-the-mark narrative momentum. He has one of the most dynamically active voices in the business. His The Beak of the Finch narration is an expressive merging of the scientific and the polemic with the overflowing living biological island of wonder that is Daphne Major: its finches and the scientists studying them, the evidence gained from the research, and the island itself, which is unique even by the standards of the Galapagos Islands. Bevine is keenly and imaginatively in touch with everything in this book. He finds himself on this enchanted island that embodies, to a near miraculous degree, the driving force of life on earth. And these finches! With no fear of humans, they will land right on you: your hand, your head, your nose, into your cup of java. It is these finches, more specifically the beaks of the finches and the oscillating changes of size and shape within 20 years of research, that demonstrate evolution in rapid action and mark a fundamental change in our understanding of the theory of evolution. The spirit of Bevine’s inner cello is tuned to these extraordinary representatives of the life force, the scientists studying them, and the wondrous stage upon which these events take place, Daphne Major. —David Chasey
Critic reviews
- Pulitzer Prize, General Non-Fiction, 1995
- AudioFile Earphones Award, 2010
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We live in a world of seeds. From our morning toast to the cotton in our clothes, they are quite literally the stuff and staff of life, supporting diets, economies, and civilizations around the globe. Just as the search for nutmeg and the humble peppercorn drove the Age of Discovery, so did coffee beans help fuel the Enlightenment and cottonseed help spark the Industrial Revolution. And from the fall of Rome to the Arab Spring, the fate of nations continues to hinge on the seeds of a Middle Eastern grass known as wheat.
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Delightfully simplistic!
- By Adrian on 03-30-16
By: Thor Hanson
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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
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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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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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The Thing with Feathers
- The Surprising Lives of Birds and What They Reveal About Being Human
- By: Noah Strycker
- Narrated by: Paul Boehmer
- Length: 8 hrs and 17 mins
- Unabridged
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Birds are highly intelligent animals, yet their intelligence is dramatically different from our own and has been little understood. As we learn more about the secrets of bird life, we are unlocking fascinating insights into memory, relationships, game theory, and the nature of intelligence itself. The Thing with Feathers explores the astonishing homing abilities of pigeons, the good deeds of fairy-wrens, the influential flocking abilities of starlings, the deft artistry of bowerbirds, the extraordinary memories of nutcrackers, and other mysteries.
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Interesting book, terrible reader
- By MGM123 on 03-16-18
By: Noah Strycker
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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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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
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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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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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Parasite Rex
- Inside the Bizarre World of Nature's Most Dangerous Creatures
- By: Carl Zimmer
- Narrated by: Charles Constant
- Length: 9 hrs and 30 mins
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For centuries, parasites have lived in nightmares, horror stories, and the darkest shadows of science. In Parasite Rex, Carl Zimmer takes listeners on a fantastic voyage into the secret universe of these extraordinary life forms that are not only among the most highly evolved on Earth, but make up the majority of life's diversity. Traveling from the steamy jungles of Costa Rica to the parasite-riddled war zone of southern Sudan, Zimmer introduces an array of amazing creatures that invade their hosts, prey on them from within, and control their behavior.
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Fascinating and Horrible
- By David A on 10-09-18
By: Carl Zimmer
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The Hidden Life of Trees
- What They Feel, How They Communicate - Discoveries from a Secret World
- By: Peter Wohlleben
- Narrated by: Mike Grady
- Length: 7 hrs and 33 mins
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How do trees live? Do they feel pain or have awareness of their surroundings? Research is now suggesting trees are capable of much more than we have ever known. In The Hidden Life of Trees, forester Peter Wohlleben puts groundbreaking scientific discoveries into a language everyone can relate to.
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Tree Hugger
- By Darwin8u on 04-18-19
By: Peter Wohlleben
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The Bald Eagle
- The Improbable Journey of America's Bird
- By: Jack E. Davis
- Narrated by: Dan John Miller
- Length: 15 hrs and 2 mins
- Unabridged
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The bald eagle is regal but fearless, a bird you’re not inclined to argue with. For centuries, Americans have celebrated it as “majestic” and “noble,” yet savaged the living bird behind their national symbol as a malicious predator of livestock and, falsely, a snatcher of babies.
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I thought the book would be about the bald eagle
- By An Amazon Buyer on 10-25-22
By: Jack E. Davis
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Remarkable Creatures
- Epic Adventures in the Search for the Origins of Species
- By: Sean B. Carroll
- Narrated by: Jim Bond
- Length: 9 hrs and 36 mins
- Unabridged
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Just 150 years ago, most of our world was an unexplored wilderness. Our sense of its age was vastly off the mark. And what we believed to be the history of our own species consisted of fantastic myths and fairy tales; fossils, known for millennia, were seen as the bones of dragons and other imagined creatures. How did we learn so much so quickly? Remarkable Creatures celebrates the pioneers who replaced our fancies with the even more remarkable real story of how our world evolved.
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A Remarkable Journey
- By Michael Dowd on 03-22-09
By: Sean B. Carroll
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The irascible A. J. Fikry, owner of Island Books - the only bookstore on Alice Island - has already lost his wife. Now his most prized possession, a rare book, has been stolen from right under his nose in the most embarrassing of circumstances. The store itself, it seems, will be next to go. One night upon closing, he discovers a toddler in his children’s section with a note from her mother pinned to her Elmo doll: I want Maya to grow up in a place with books and among people who care about such kinds of things. I love her very much, but I can no longer take care of her.
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A highly infectious, deadly virus from the central African rain forest suddenly appears in the suburbs of Washington, D.C. There is no cure. In a few days, 90 percent of its victims are dead. A secret military SWAT team of soldiers and scientists is mobilized to stop the outbreak of this exotic "hot" virus. The Hot Zone tells this dramatic story, giving a hair-raising account of the appearance of rare and lethal viruses and their "crashes" into the human race. Shocking, frightening, and impossible to ignore, The Hot Zone proves that truth really is scarier than fiction.
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If you love viruses and gore and non-fiction...
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The Overstory
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The Overstory unfolds in concentric rings of interlocking fable that range from antebellum New York to the late 20th-century Timber Wars of the Pacific Northwest and beyond. An air force loadmaster in the Vietnam War is shot out of the sky, then saved by falling into a banyan. An artist inherits 100 years of photographic portraits, all of the same doomed American chestnut. A hard-partying undergraduate in the late 1980s electrocutes herself, dies, and is sent back into life by creatures of air and light.
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eye opening
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What listeners say about The Beak of the Finch
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- Margaret
- 04-08-15
Powerful narrative; fascinating subject
For people who don't have a strong science background, but do believe in evolution and natural selection - the next time some fan of Fox News tells you with great confidence that "Darwin's Theory of Evolution was just a theory. It hasn't been proven," you can whip this book out of your backpack and beat them with it.
Completely accessible, written with a strong narrative arc that keeps you turning pages, Weiner has created a compelling work of popular science. He summarizes, in layman's terms, some of the great field research projects that usually scientists only talk about to each other. Projects where natural selection, sexual selection and hybridization have been observed to change species within the span of human observation. That's right, folks, proof after proof of evolution in various ways - theory no longer.
Weiner then goes on to relate these proofs to other touchstones in our lives - drug-resistant viruses, catastrophic weather events.
This is a darn good read as well as being a sensible antidote to the anti-science wave of foolishness sweeping the U.S.
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5 people found this helpful
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- Sarah
- 01-19-16
Superb
If you want to understand the modern science of evolution (it's not a theory anymore), and some of the fascinating work that has been done to elucidate its mechanisms, this is the book for you. It is thorough, varied, and fascinating.
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3 people found this helpful
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- RickyF
- 02-21-21
Wonderful book on modern evolution studies
Well written, extremely informative. Unfortunately the narrator's attempts at using other voices for the many quotations in the book are laughable. If he had not tried any voice besides his normal one I would have given him 5 stars. The book is definitely worth listening to.
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- Gare&Sophia
- 03-24-14
This book clearly deserves all its awards
Evolution made material, without anthropology. Did you know that the illegal ivory trade is causing elephants to be born with shorter or non-existent tusks. Well written and fascinating for the evolution buff. A must read!
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6 people found this helpful
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- Melinda
- 10-31-19
A fantastic introduction to evolution!
This is essential reading for anyone interested in ecology or evolution. The book conveys the science in a very clear and concise manner, without dumbing it down.
This book will make you look at nature with a new eye.
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- Nicole Del Sesto
- 09-06-17
There. Will. Be. Beaks.
This book is literally about the beaks of finches in the Galapagos. And it's also about natural selection, but as it relates to these finches. The first 25% I thought I'd lose my mind if they talked about the beaks of these finches anymore, but then I got fascinated.
The patience these scientists have is amazing. Years and years of work to understand these microscopic developmental changes. It's pretty mind blowing. What I think I found most interesting was the birds reactions to drought and El Nino.
Shortly after I finished this I started Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies and in a million years, I wouldn't have thought the two were in any way related, but it turns out that (among other things) Jared Diamond is an evolutionary biologist, so "Beak" laid a very good foundation for what I've heard so far in this new book.
Who knew science could be interesting?
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7 people found this helpful
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- D. Lockwood
- 02-07-21
Superb
A wonderfully rich description of some of the modern research into the current topic of evolution and the remarkable people who conduct that research. I found it fascinating and engrossing.
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- Cassandra Tavolarella
- 12-19-18
PLANET EARTH IN AUDIO FORM.
If you don’t care about birds, this book will change you!
I am usually bored by science writing and know nothing about birds but this book is so fascinating and the story telling made it so compelling, I was recommending it to everyone. Victor and Jonathan transport you out of your car and into the island life of the Galapagos. Give this book a shot.
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- Mark Bird
- 11-05-23
Good History/Too Alarmist
An excellent accessible history of how the Galapagos fit into Darwin's evolving thoughts. But why, starting with the chapter on pesticide resistance, turn this into a hackneyed alarmist environmental polemic? There is a certain irony that since this was published the many imminent catastrophes described by the author have not only not happened but conditions in the Galapagos have actually improved, in part due to the insecticides & pesticides despised by the author (wiping out, for instance, invasive goats and red ants).
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- Eric
- 10-21-11
Excellent Info, sometimes a bit too much
The book was excellent and really detailed, which was good to a point. I don't know what I would have cut as an editor because it was an insightful examination of the Finches and other examples of speciation, but I found that at the halfway point I found myself thinking "really only I am only half way through the book? I could teach a course on this from the information that I have been given so far. What more could they possibly have to say?" Then the author would give me more great information that backed what he was saying.
Really an insightful and information packed read that gives the Real world life of scientists actively doing science and teh results that they are coming up with. Just a bit too long.
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6 people found this helpful