Evolution
An Audio Guide
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Evolution
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Narrated by:
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Dave Ferguson
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By:
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Burton Guttman
About this listen
Covering everything from fossilised dinosaurs to intelligent apes, this is an accessible guide to one of the most important scientific theories of all time. Burt Guttman assumes no prior scientific knowledge on the part of the listener, and explains each of the key ideas and concepts, including natural selection, genetics, and the evolution of animal behaviour, in a lively and informative way.
Looking ahead to the future of evolutionary theory, and assessing its possible implications for the way we understand morality, human nature, and our place in the world, this audiobook provides the perfect starting point for understanding what evolution is and why it matters.
©2005 Burton Guttman (P)2012 Bolinda PublishingListeners also enjoyed...
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 177
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4 out of 5 stars
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Please do an unabridged version!
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No Nobel Prize Here!
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Editorial reviews
Dave Ferguson's animated narration of Evolution makes this a captivating audio experience. The listener feels smarter just by listening! Burton Guttman's information is thorough and his aim is clear: He wants the listener to use this "beginner's guide" as a gateway into the vast world of evolution scholarship. The audio provides key information for understanding the history and influence of evolution theory, genetics, and animal behavior. It is an invaluable guide for those who have not previously studied the subject, and a refreshing reminder for those who have.
Critic reviews
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 103
-
Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 61
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 61
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
- By Robert on 06-19-15
By: Jack Horner, and others
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The Blind Watchmaker
- Why the Evidence of Evolution Reveals a Universe Without Design
- By: Richard Dawkins
- Narrated by: Richard Dawkins, Lalla Ward
- Length: 14 hrs and 40 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 2,822
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 2,442
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 2,413
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
- By Eric on 01-15-12
By: Richard Dawkins
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The Vital Question
- Energy, Evolution, and the Origins of Complex Life
- By: Nick Lane
- Narrated by: Kevin Pariseau
- Length: 11 hrs and 27 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 1,178
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 1,042
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 1,031
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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4 out of 5 stars
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Ouch!
- By Mark on 06-24-16
By: Nick Lane
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Evolution
- What the Fossils Say and Why it Matters: Adapted for Audio
- 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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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
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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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The Equations of Life
- How Physics Shapes Evolution
- By: Charles S. Cockell
- Narrated by: Ian Porter
- Length: 11 hrs and 42 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 135
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 113
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 114
In The Equations of Life, biologist Charles S. Cockell makes the forceful argument that the laws of physics narrowly constrain how life can evolve, making evolution's outcomes predictable. If we were to find something very much like a lady bug eating something very much like an aphid on a distant planet, we shouldn't be surprised. The forms of life are guided by a limited set of rules, and, as a result, there is a narrow set of solutions to the challenges of existence.
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3 out of 5 stars
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Too many equations, not enough insights
- By Alec Drumm on 09-24-18
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Genesis
- The Deep Origin of Societies
- By: Edward O. Wilson
- Narrated by: Jonathan Hogan
- Length: 3 hrs and 8 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 83
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Performance4 out of 5 stars 68
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Story4 out of 5 stars 66
Asserting that religious creeds and philosophical questions can be reduced to purely genetic and evolutionary components, and that the human body and mind have a physical base obedient to the laws of physics and chemistry, Genesis demonstrates that the only way for us to fully understand human behavior is to study the evolutionary histories of nonhuman species. Of these, Wilson demonstrates that at least 17 - among them the African naked mole rat and the sponge-dwelling shrimp - have been found to have advanced societies based on altruism and cooperation.
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1 out of 5 stars
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Simply awful
- By Mike A Klotz on 02-07-20
By: Edward O. Wilson
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I, Mammal
- By: Liam Drew
- Narrated by: Neil Gardner
- Length: 11 hrs and 26 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall5 out of 5 stars 22
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Performance5 out of 5 stars 20
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Story5 out of 5 stars 20
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?
- By Fitmen on 04-25-18
By: Liam Drew
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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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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 102
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 87
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 87
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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5 out of 5 stars
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Great Book, Some Sloppy Editing
- By DB on 11-23-20
By: Ian Tattersall
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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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Written in Stone
- Evolution, the Fossil Record, and Our Place in Nature
- By: Brian Switek
- Narrated by: L. J. Ganser
- Length: 11 hrs and 29 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 308
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 258
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 254
Spectacular fossil finds make today's headlines; new technology unlocks secrets of skeletons unearthed 100 years ago. Still, evolution is often poorly represented by the media and misunderstood by the public. A potent antidote to pseudoscience, Written in Stone is an engrossing history of evolutionary discovery for anyone who has marveled at the variety and richness of life.
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4 out of 5 stars
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Very good but has some weaknesses
- By Anonymous User on 06-23-19
By: Brian Switek
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The Deeper Genome
- Why There Is More to the Human Genome than Meets the Eye
- By: John Parrington
- Narrated by: John Lee
- Length: 9 hrs
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 106
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Performance4 out of 5 stars 91
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Story4 out of 5 stars 92
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
- By Richard on 11-24-15
By: John Parrington
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Population Wars
- A New Perspective on Competition and Coexistence
- By: Greg Graffin
- Narrated by: Tom Zingarelli
- Length: 10 hrs and 20 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall5 out of 5 stars 126
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 109
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Story5 out of 5 stars 111
From the very beginning, life on Earth has been defined by war. Today, those first wars continue to be fought around and literally inside us, influencing our individual behavior and that of civilization as a whole. War between populations - whether between different species or between rival groups of humans - is seen as an inevitable part of the evolutionary process. The popular concept of "the survival of the fittest" explains and often excuses these actions.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Life Changing Book. No other like it.
- By Abraham R. Herrick-Rough on 05-16-16
By: Greg Graffin
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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 934
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 524
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 525
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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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
- Unabridged
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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
What listeners say about Evolution
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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Overall3 out of 5 stars
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Performance4 out of 5 stars
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Story3 out of 5 stars
- Jose
- 05-19-20
Good Science Content but weird Defensive Rants
Book has lots of good content and you can use it to launch deeper reading. I guess the author must be a victim of sorts, he dedicates the final 20% of the book defending evolution from "attacks".
But you don't see Math books spending the last chapter attacking folks that use simple estimates versus calculus. Engineers do not attack technology amateurs. Engineers say god bless and good luck! Perhaps, this evolutionary biologist spent too much time in arguments. Engineers don't argue about theory, they just focus on what works and what is useful. So, an evolutionary book should focus on the Bio-engineering utilities of evolution, then it's a stress-free world of talking results.
Really good content on why there is a limit on finding all the links to deep past. Viruses, bacteria, DNA, and proteins don't become fossils. So we have to understand microbiology in the present.
So, 80% of the book is good, the rest is a rant.The 80% is good stuff, I listened until the very end. Saying that most people are ignorant is not a healthy way to look at the world, you don't see Richard P Feynman say stuff like that. Feynman does not have a chip on his shoulder and talks results, makes him more confident and more pleasant to read.
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