Evolution
A Very Short Introduction
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Evolution
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Narrated by:
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Kevin Young
About this listen
Less than 450 years ago, all European scholars believed that the Earth was at the center of a universe that was at most a few million miles in extent, and that the planets, sun, and stars all rotated around this center. Less than 250 years ago, they believed that the universe was created essentially in its present state about 6,000 years ago. Even less than 150 years ago, the view that living species were the result of special creation by God was still dominant. The recognition by Charles Darwin and Alfred Russel Wallace of the mechanism of evolution by natural selection has completely transformed our understanding of the living world, including our own origins.
Brian and Deborah Charlesworth provide a clear and concise summary of the process of evolution by natural selection, and how natural selection gives rise to adaptations and eventually, over many generations, to new species. They introduce the central concepts of the field of evolutionary biology, as they have developed since Darwin and Wallace on the subject, over 140 years ago, and discuss some of the remaining questions regarding processes. They highlight the wide range of evidence for evolution, and the importance of an evolutionary understanding for instance in combating the rapid evolution of resistance by bacteria to antibiotics and of HIV to antiviral drugs.
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The Earth teems with life: in its oceans, forests, skies, and cities. Yet there's a black hole at the heart of biology. We do not know why complex life is the way it is, or, for that matter, how life first began. In The Vital Question, award-winning author and biochemist Nick Lane radically reframes evolutionary history, putting forward a solution to conundrums that have puzzled generations of scientists.
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Ouch!
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I, Mammal
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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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4 out of 5 stars
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Who knew?
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The Deeper Genome
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Over a decade ago, as the Human Genome Project completed its mapping of the entire human genome, hopes ran high that we would rapidly be able to use our knowledge of human genes to tackle many inherited diseases, and understand what makes us unique among animals. But things didn't turn out that way.
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3 out of 5 stars
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Great Scientific Writing/ Wrong Narrator
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The Blind Watchmaker
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The Blind Watchmaker, knowledgably narrated by author Richard Dawkins, is as prescient and timely a book as ever. The watchmaker belongs to the 18th-century theologian William Paley, who argued that just as a watch is too complicated and functional to have sprung into existence by accident, so too must all living things, with their far greater complexity, be purposefully designed. Charles Darwin's brilliant discovery challenged the creationist arguments; but only Richard Dawkins could have written this elegant riposte.
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4 out of 5 stars
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Challenging textbook more than an enjoyable listen
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How to Build a Dinosaur
- Extinction Doesn't Have to Be Forever
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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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4 out of 5 stars
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Good book but misplaced title
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Life Unfolding
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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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3 out of 5 stars
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Fascinating Biology ; Distracting Narration
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By: Jamie A. Davies
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Welcome to the Microbiome
- Getting to Know the Trillions of Bacteria and Other Microbes In, On, and Around You
- By: Rob DeSalle, Susan L. Perkins
- Narrated by: Stephen McLaughlin
- Length: 7 hrs and 25 mins
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 36
-
Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 35
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 34
Suddenly, research findings require a paradigm shift in our view of the microbial world. The Human Microbiome Project at the National Institutes of Health is well under way, and unprecedented scientific technology now allows the censusing of trillions of microbes inside and on our bodies as well as in the places where we live, work, and play. This intriguing, up-to-the-minute book for scientists and nonscientists alike explains what researchers are discovering about the microbe world and what the implications are for modern science and medicine.
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5 out of 5 stars
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I learned so much from this book. I am happy.
- By Jonathan Miller on 09-08-18
By: Rob DeSalle, and others
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How to Clone a Mammoth
- The Science of De-Extinction
- By: Beth Shapiro
- Narrated by: Coleen Marlo
- Length: 7 hrs and 13 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 128
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 109
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 109
Could extinct species, like mammoths and passenger pigeons, be brought back to life? The science says yes. In How to Clone a Mammoth, Beth Shapiro, evolutionary biologist and pioneer in "ancient DNA" research, walks listeners through the astonishing and controversial process of de-extinction.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Very Readable Take on a Complex Subject
- By John on 04-26-15
By: Beth Shapiro
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Evolution
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- By: Donald R. Prothero
- Narrated by: John Bishop
- Length: 7 hrs and 14 mins
- Abridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 93
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 86
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 86
Over the past 20 years, paleontologists have made tremendous fossil discoveries, including fossils that mark the growth of whales, manatees, and seals from land mammals and the origins of elephants, horses, and rhinos. Today there exists an amazing diversity of fossil humans, suggesting we walked upright long before we acquired large brains, and new evidence from molecules that enable scientists to decipher the tree of life as never before.
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2 out of 5 stars
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NOT WORTH THE PRICE OF ADDMISSION
- By CRAIG on 12-25-14
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A Series of Fortunate Events
- Chance and the Making of the Planet, Life, and You
- By: Sean B. Carroll
- Narrated by: Sean B. Carroll
- Length: 4 hrs and 48 mins
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 131
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Performance5 out of 5 stars 111
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 109
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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4 out of 5 stars
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We are for a short time.
- By Anonymous User on 10-14-20
By: Sean B. Carroll
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Creation
- How Science Is Reinventing Life Itself
- By: Adam Rutherford
- Narrated by: Walter Dixon
- Length: 6 hrs and 53 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 44
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Performance4 out of 5 stars 43
-
Story4 out of 5 stars 43
What is life? Humans have been asking this question for thousands of years. But as technology has advanced and our understanding of biology has deepened, the answer has evolved. For decades, scientists have been exploring the limits of nature by modifying and manipulating DNA, cells, and whole organisms to create new ones that could never have previously existed on their own.
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5 out of 5 stars
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The Goldilocks book on what is life
- By Gary on 07-11-13
By: Adam Rutherford
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Domesticated
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- By: Richard C. Francis
- Narrated by: Eric Jason Martin
- Length: 13 hrs and 6 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 199
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 184
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 179
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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4 out of 5 stars
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Well, what did you expect?
- By Mark on 03-25-16
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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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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 932
-
Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 522
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 523
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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5 out of 5 stars
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Amazing information
- By Albert on 06-15-07
By: Nicholas Wade
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Arrival of the Fittest
- Solving Evolution's Greatest Puzzle
- By: Andreas Wagner
- Narrated by: Sean Pratt
- Length: 8 hrs and 29 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 355
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Performance4 out of 5 stars 299
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Story4 out of 5 stars 300
In Arrival of the Fittest, renowned evolutionary biologist Andreas Wagner draws on over 15 years of research to present the missing piece in Darwin's theory. Using experimental and computational technologies that were heretofore unimagined, he has found that adaptations are not just driven by chance, but by a set of laws that allow nature to discover new molecules and mechanisms in a fraction of the time that random variation would take.
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4 out of 5 stars
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Robustness makes for an interesting life and book
- By Gary on 11-29-14
By: Andreas Wagner
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VSI # 69
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Geometry
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 3
The study of geometry is at least 2500 years old, and it is within this field that the concept of mathematical proof first arose. To this day geometry remains a very active area of research in mathematics. This Very Short Introduction covers the areas of mathematics falling under geometry, starting with topics such as Euclidean and non-Euclidean geometries, and ranging to curved spaces, projective geometry in Renaissance art, and geometry of space-time inside a black hole. Throughout, Maciej Dunajski outlines the role geometry plays in the broader context of science and art.
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1 out of 5 stars
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Um, where's the PDF? No? So, where's the refund?
- By Nelson Alexander on 01-21-23
By: Maciej Dunajski
What listeners say about Evolution
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Overall4 out of 5 stars
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Performance5 out of 5 stars
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Story3 out of 5 stars
- Douglas Perry
- 06-24-24
As One Would Expect
Concise, as intended; superficial, as expected. Very helpful as an overview. I would recommend this as a summary review, not an introduction.
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