Ten Birds That Changed the World
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Ten Birds That Changed the World
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Narrated by:
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Stephen Moss
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By:
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Stephen Moss
About this listen
For the whole of human history, we have lived alongside birds. We have hunted and domesticated them for food; venerated them in our mythologies, religion and rituals; exploited them for their natural resources; and been inspired by them for our music, art and poetry.
In Ten Birds That Changed the World, naturalist and author Stephen Moss tells the gripping story of this long and eventful relationship through ten key species from all seven of the world's continents. From Odin's faithful raven companions to Darwin's finches, and from the wild turkey of the Americas to the emperor penguin as potent symbol of the climate crisis, this is a fascinating, eye-opening and endlessly engaging work of natural history.
©2023 Stephen Moss (P)2023 Faber AudioListeners also enjoyed...
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- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 93
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 83
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 82
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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5 out of 5 stars
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Thought-Provoking
- By Jean on 10-23-18
By: Henry Nicholls
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Guns, Germs and Steel
- The Fate of Human Societies
- By: Jared Diamond
- Narrated by: Doug Ordunio
- Length: 16 hrs and 20 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 12,325
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 10,358
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 10,314
Having done field work in New Guinea for more than 30 years, Jared Diamond presents the geographical and ecological factors that have shaped the modern world. From the viewpoint of an evolutionary biologist, he highlights the broadest movements both literal and conceptual on every continent since the Ice Age, and examines societal advances such as writing, religion, government, and technology.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Compelling pre-history and emergent history
- By Doug on 08-25-11
By: Jared Diamond
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The Last Hours of Ancient Sunlight: Revised and Updated
- The Fate of the World and What We Can Do Before It's Too Late
- By: Thom Hartmann, Neale Donald Walsch - associate editor
- Narrated by: Paul Boehmer
- Length: 18 hrs and 2 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 93
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 79
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 80
While everything appears to be collapsing around us - ecodamage, genetic engineering, virulent diseases, water shortages, global famine, wars - we can still do something about it and create a world that will work for us and for our children's children. The inspiration for Leonardo DiCaprio's feature documentary movie The 11th Hour, The Last Hours of Ancient Sunlight details what is happening to our planet, the reasons for our culture's blind behavior, and how we can fix the problem.
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5 out of 5 stars
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One of the Most Important Books of our Time
- By Jana on 04-24-20
By: Thom Hartmann, and others
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Pandora's Seed
- The Unforeseen Cost of Civilization
- By: Spencer Wells
- Narrated by: Spencer Wells
- Length: 6 hrs and 40 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 169
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Performance4 out of 5 stars 68
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Story4 out of 5 stars 69
This new book by Spencer Wells, the internationally known geneticist, anthropologist, author, and director of the Genographic Project, focuses on the seminal event in human history: mankind's decision to become farmers rather than hunter-gatherers.
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3 out of 5 stars
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Short and unfocused, but often quite interesting.
- By Alan on 06-23-10
By: Spencer Wells
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American Serengeti
- The Last Big Animals of the Great Plains
- By: Dan Flores
- Narrated by: Michael Kramer
- Length: 8 hrs and 3 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 1,641
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 1,447
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 1,445
America's Great Plains once possessed one of the grandest wildlife spectacles of the world, equaled only by such places as the Serengeti, the Masai Mara, or the veld of South Africa. Pronghorn antelope, gray wolves, bison, coyotes, wild horses, and grizzly bears: less than 200 years ago these creatures existed in such abundance that John James Audubon was moved to write "it is impossible to describe or even conceive the vast multitudes of these animals".
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3 out of 5 stars
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Could have been great, but
- By An Amazon Buyer on 08-29-18
By: Dan Flores
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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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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 34
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Performance5 out of 5 stars 32
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 32
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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2 out of 5 stars
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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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The Great Warming
- Climate Change and the Rise and Fall of Civilizations
- By: Brian Fagan
- Narrated by: Tavia Gilbert
- Length: 9 hrs and 17 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 103
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Performance4 out of 5 stars 73
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 74
The history of the Great Warming of a half millennium ago suggests that we may yet be underestimating the power of climate change to disrupt our lives todayand our vulnerability to drought, writes Fagan, is the silent elephant in the room.
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2 out of 5 stars
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Good book but unpracticed, disjointed narration.
- By Paul on 09-12-10
By: Brian Fagan
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Unbound
- How Eight Technologies Made Us Human, Transformed Society, and Brought Our World to the Brink
- By: Richard L. Currier
- Narrated by: Noah Michael Levine
- Length: 10 hrs and 36 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 242
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 214
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Story4 out of 5 stars 213
Although we usually think of technology as something unique to modern times, our ancestors began to create the first technologies millions of years ago in the form of prehistoric tools and weapons. Over time, eight key technologies gradually freed us from the limitations of our animal origins.
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3 out of 5 stars
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Good facts, not much else
- By Joel B. Gordon on 10-30-16
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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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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 179
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 152
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 151
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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3 out of 5 stars
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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 Fate of Rome
- Climate, Disease, and the End of an Empire
- By: Kyle Harper
- Narrated by: Andrew Garman
- Length: 15 hrs and 20 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 397
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 331
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 329
Interweaving a grand historical narrative with cutting-edge climate science and genetic discoveries, Kyle Harper traces how the fate of Rome was decided not just by emperors, soldiers, and barbarians but also by volcanic eruptions, solar cycles, climate instability, and devastating viruses and bacteria. He takes listeners from Rome's pinnacle in the second century, when the empire seemed an invincible superpower, to its unraveling by the seventh century, when Rome was politically fragmented and materially depleted.
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3 out of 5 stars
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Interesting and worthwhile
- By B. Coleman on 06-15-19
By: Kyle Harper
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Why Did the Chicken Cross the World?
- The Epic Saga of the Bird That Powers Civilization
- By: Andrew Lawler
- Narrated by: Dennis Holland
- Length: 10 hrs and 47 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 164
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 146
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Story4 out of 5 stars 145
From ancient empires to modern economics, veteran journalist Andrew Lawler delivers a sweeping history of the animal that has been most crucial to the spread of civilization across the globe: the chicken. Queen Victoria was obsessed with it. Socrates' last words were about it. Charles Darwin and Louis Pasteur made their scientific breakthroughs using it. Catholic popes, African shamans, Chinese philosophers, and Muslim mystics praised it.
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4 out of 5 stars
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Never imagined the volume of bird trivia
- By Neuron on 11-04-18
By: Andrew Lawler
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Coyote America
- A Natural and Supernatural History
- By: Dan Flores
- Narrated by: Elijah Alexander
- Length: 8 hrs and 51 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 3,890
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 3,414
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 3,415
Coyote America is both an environmental and a deep natural history of the coyote. It traces both the five-million-year-long biological story of an animal that has become the "wolf" in our backyards and its cultural evolution from a preeminent spot in Native American religions to the hapless foil of the Road Runner. A deeply American tale, the story of the coyote in the American West and beyond is a sort of Manifest Destiny in reverse.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Very Enjoyable Book, Subject Matter, and Reader
- By John Townsend on 03-17-17
By: Dan Flores
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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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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 74
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Performance5 out of 5 stars 61
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Story5 out of 5 stars 61
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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5 out of 5 stars
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Amazing
- By Lars Pardo on 11-21-24
By: Enric Sala
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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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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 34
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 29
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 29
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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5 out of 5 stars
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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 Wonder of Birds
- What They Tell Us About Ourselves, the World, and a Better Future
- By: Jim Robbins
- Narrated by: Danny Campbell
- Length: 11 hrs and 10 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 84
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 80
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 78
Birds, Jim Robbins posits, are our most vital connection to nature. They compel us to look to the skies, both literally and metaphorically, draw us out into nature to seek their beauty, and let us experience vicariously what it is like to be weightless. Birds have helped us in so many of our human endeavors: learning to fly, providing clothing and food, and helping us better understand the human brain and body.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Stories about birds with something for everyone
- By D on 07-24-17
By: Jim Robbins
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Don't Know Much About Geography: Revised and Updated Edition
- Everything You Need to Know About the World But Never Learned, Revised and Updated
- By: Kenneth C. Davis
- Narrated by: Kenneth C. Davis, Joe Ochman, Mark Bramhall, and others
- Length: 12 hrs and 46 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 83
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 70
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Story4 out of 5 stars 67
Kenneth C. Davis, author of Don't Know Much About® History, Don't Know Much About the Civil War and Don't Know Much About the Bible, turns his inimitable wit and wide-ranging knowledge to the subject of geography, and proves once and for all that there is a lot more to it than labeling countries on a map. From often amusing perceptions people have had through the ages about the world and the universe to the changing map of today, Davis shows how geography is really a great crossroad of many fields: biology, meteorology, astronomy, history, economics, and even politics.
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1 out of 5 stars
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Errors
- By The Product Owner on 08-29-15
By: Kenneth C. Davis
What listeners say about Ten Birds That Changed the World
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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Overall4 out of 5 stars
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Performance4 out of 5 stars
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Story4 out of 5 stars
- Paal Skjetne
- 03-19-23
Interesting - but too many anecdotes
Love the topic, but I feel the selection could have been different. Not all the birds have changed the world, but were more cjanged themselves.
The topic is more a review of how human activity has and is impacting our planet, and this is illustrated by some of the grim consequences this has had for birds.
But all in all very enjoyable.
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