The renowned biologist and thinker Richard Dawkins presents his most expansive work yet: a comprehensive look at evolution, ranging from the latest...
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Mar 14, 2008
Jen
rated it: 
Poor Dawkins - he gets a bad reputation. People think he's mean and nasty and heartless and elitist.
Okay, I might have to grant people the "elitist" bit, because, well, I'm a bit of an elitist myself. But I dare you all to read this book and then tell me that Dawkins isn't a total squishy.
Let's just say this - he stops in the middle of the book to talk about how much he misses Douglas Adams, who was a dear friend of his. He waxes poetic about evolution an More...
Okay, I might have to grant people the "elitist" bit, because, well, I'm a bit of an elitist myself. But I dare you all to read this book and then tell me that Dawkins isn't a total squishy.
Let's just say this - he stops in the middle of the book to talk about how much he misses Douglas Adams, who was a dear friend of his. He waxes poetic about evolution an More...
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Aug 15, 2011
GWC
rated it: 
Fascinating zoology but plenty of flotsam. "The Beaver's Tale" "The Duckbill's Tale" and "The Axolotl's Tale" are outstanding examples of modern naturalism. The classical genetics is adequate but the molecular data is explained minimally and not compelling. More details on the challenges and uncertainties inherent in genomic sequencing and cross-species comparisons would have been helpful. When Dawkins is not discussing zoology the writing is overly verbose, and
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Sep 05, 2007
Casey
rated it: 
After finishing The Selfish Gene, I rushed out to the store to buy another of Dawkins' books. While the size of this tome was quite intimidating, I found the premise utterly fascinating. The narrative traces humans' evolutionary ancestry, from primates to "concestor zero," or the beginning of life on Earth.
Dawkins' knowledge of zoology shines as he gives examples of the fascinating animals that share some of our genes. Readers will undoubtedly learn about plants and animals More...
Dawkins' knowledge of zoology shines as he gives examples of the fascinating animals that share some of our genes. Readers will undoubtedly learn about plants and animals More...
Apr 08, 2010
Manny
rated it:
On Monday, an old friend came round to lunch, and, while we were having a cup of tea in the living room, remarked on the number of Richard Dawkins books on my shelf. Somehow, I'd never heard that she'd actually had Dawkins as a supervisor for one term when she was an undergraduate at Oxford in the late 70s; it was in connection with the course she was reading on animal behaviour. I asked what he was like as a person, and she was unenthusiastic. Clearly very intelligent, but there was something a
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60 comments
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(24 people liked it)
Jun 27, 2008
Jerzy
rated it:
Fantastic! If I'd read this in high school I would definitely be a biologist by now.
Often I agree with Dawkins' views on creationists, but usually he's an obnoxious ass about it. Thankfully, in this book he only disses them occasionally. For most of the book he sticks to his strengths, i.e., clear and exciting explanations of the beautiful yet structured diversity of the natural world.
Lots of nifty thoughts about how evolution works and how mind-shatteringly cool life is. There More...
Often I agree with Dawkins' views on creationists, but usually he's an obnoxious ass about it. Thankfully, in this book he only disses them occasionally. For most of the book he sticks to his strengths, i.e., clear and exciting explanations of the beautiful yet structured diversity of the natural world.
Lots of nifty thoughts about how evolution works and how mind-shatteringly cool life is. There More...
Sep 25, 2007
Courtney
rated it:
The Ancestor's Tale is an incredible find! With a form based loosely on Chaucer's Canterbury Tales, Dawkins marches back in time to each of humankind's ancestors. Witty, brilliant and engaging, you will learn a great deal about evolutionary biology, and a million fun and intriguing facts. Whether you agree to disagree with the facts establishing evolution as a law of science, this book is worth your time. Plus, it is so dense and rich, you will feel proud to put it on your shelf after you ha
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(3 people liked it)
Nov 09, 2010
Brent
rated it:
So kudos are in order, first, for Dawkins finally coming up with a subtitle that is extremely helpful and not extremely corny, but more importantly, for the book as a whole, which I consider his magnum opus.
Little do you know, or little did you know if you've read this one, that a methodical, 600 plus page epic literally marching back in time to the dawn of evolution, could be so readable and enjoyable. I confess only to skimming a few pages toward the end when I thought the detail More...
Little do you know, or little did you know if you've read this one, that a methodical, 600 plus page epic literally marching back in time to the dawn of evolution, could be so readable and enjoyable. I confess only to skimming a few pages toward the end when I thought the detail More...
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Mar 30, 2007
Brian
rated it:
I've been a fan of Dawkins for a while solely based on interviews, but this is the first of his books I've actually read. It works its way backwards through the evolutionary tree, detailing how all living things are related - how a stranger on the street, your dog, your house plant, bacteria and you are all distant cousins. It's a fascinating read, technical enough if you're interested, but not so much so that it's threatening to the non-science minded. It's broken into various "tales"
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Jul 25, 2007
Doctordave
rated it:
This is the best science book I read in 2006. The structure (moving backwards thru the history of life) is unique, and works for the most part. (Ok, it got a little boring when it lingered on things like nematode worms and the like near the end) The only thing I wish the book had...? Illustrations! I had to keep my laptop by my side and constantly Google the names of organisms i'd never heard of to see what they look like.
Dawkins is a seductive writer... I would recommend always read More...
Dawkins is a seductive writer... I would recommend always read More...
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Aug 11, 2007
Robin
rated it:
This is my favorite book in the whole world. Someday it may be eclipsed by something else but for now it's this. What I love most about this book is the number of times I found myself thinking, "Wow, I had no idea". It makes perfect sense when you think it out, but the entire premise of the book, that every living thing on earth, from human being to plant to bacteria, shares a common ancestor, that actually existed at a point sufficiently far enough in the past. The book consists of a
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(4 people liked it)
Jul 26, 2007
Zach
rated it:
Very well-written, extremely eloquent, not particularly abstruse. Incredibly informative, dense but not impenetrably so. Slightly cheapened by a few brief but unnecessary political comments. Jabs at religion are to be expected with a Dawkins book, but unless directly addressing creationist claims, also unnecessary. Particularly poignant passages regarding uncertainties of molecular dating issues. Historical perspective on how our understandings of various organisms & their phylogenies are t
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(2 people liked it)
Nov 16, 2007
Miles
rated it:
A great book. Also full of fun, amazing trivia about the mind-blowing diversity of life as well as the easily over looked fundamental links and commonalities between huge classifications of organisms. I learned from books like this that the full implications of the scale of universal time and space, as well as the far more finite scale of earthly life and development, and the implications of evolution are still only scarcely and slowly seeping into our consciousness and our view of ourselves and
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Oct 18, 2008
Félix
rated it:
I am enjoying this book immensely. Dawkins tells me so many interesting scientific things in the most conversational and understandable way, feeding my hunger for knowledge of the history of life on Earth. No really -- a nonfiction that I can't put down! Stay tuned, science buffs.
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(1 person liked it)
Feb 05, 2011
Snehal
rated it:
Political economy basics are often explained with the help of an analogy: we imagine a beach in summer with people sun-bathing; for the sake of simplicity, we assume that the beach is one-dimensional- a straight line running from left to right- and that the people are distributed approximately equidistant from each other. An enterprising ice-cream vendor comes along with his cart and sets up shop - where should he position himself if he desires to maximize his sales?
Clearly, anywhere More...
Clearly, anywhere More...
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Oct 23, 2010
Brian
rated it:
This book blew my mind so many times in so many ways. It is quite simply the most fascinating thing I have ever read about life on this planet. Dawkins traces our evolution from the present day back through the very first organisms on earth. He uses various "rendezvouses" to show the points where we connected with other species and phyla and what those connections say about us, about our biology and about life in general.
By tracing our lineage back through these variou More...
By tracing our lineage back through these variou More...
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Jun 19, 2010
Punk
rated it:
Non-Fiction. 4 billion years of evolution, practically in real time. To avoid any "human-centrism," Dawkins -- famous for his outspoken stance against creationism -- does this backwards and models the journey on Chaucer's Canterbury Tales. Scared yet? Well, it's not in rhyme or Old English, but Dawkins does tend toward lofty language and wild, rambling digressions. It bugged me at first, but over the course of this SIX HUNDRED PAGE BOOK, I got used to it and even grew to appreciate Daw
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(2 people liked it)
Jun 02, 2011
Tom
rated it:
Some of Dawkins post Selfish Gene works can feel as though they are covering the same ground, but not The Ancestor's Tale. I was fascinated.
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Jan 11, 2012
John
rated it:
"The Ancestor's Tale: A Pilgrimage to the Dawn of Evolution" is a beguiling literary trek through the taxonomy and history of life on Planet Earth; one that's led with ample eloquence by eminent evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins. In this vast tome Dawkins has crafted what is indeed the popular scientific equivalent of Chaucer's "The Canterbury Tales", taking us along a long journey back to the dawn of life itself, approximately 4 billion years ago, via a molecular phylog
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Aug 31, 2011
Andy
rated it:
Richard Dawkins is not the kind of person you want as an enemy - but then not many people seem that keen to be his friend, either. He's a difficult person to like - clearly hugely intelligent and knowledgeable in his field, and a brilliant communicator, but at the same time obviously a terrible old fusspot (even unto the point of pedantry), prone to smugness and elitism bordering on outright snobbishness, and utterly unable to acknowledge that there anything might exist beyond the realm of the e
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Aug 09, 2011
procrastin8or
rated it:
This highly acclaimed book from the world’s best-known evolutionary biologist takes an interesting approach to its narrative.
Expressed in a format that is a homage to Chaucer’s ‘Canterbury Tales’, there are no chapters but mini stories as we travel on our journey back through time to unite the branches of the evolutionary tree (the Neanderthal’s Tale, The Gibbon’s Tale, The Peacock’s Tale etc) until we reach the dawn of life itself.
Each ‘Tale’ discusses the modern creature in depth and the featu More...
Expressed in a format that is a homage to Chaucer’s ‘Canterbury Tales’, there are no chapters but mini stories as we travel on our journey back through time to unite the branches of the evolutionary tree (the Neanderthal’s Tale, The Gibbon’s Tale, The Peacock’s Tale etc) until we reach the dawn of life itself.
Each ‘Tale’ discusses the modern creature in depth and the featu More...
Jul 27, 2011
Dawkins is really ingeneous when it comes to finding new ways and perspectives to explore the evolution. He is very pedagogical in this book and it is easy to follow his line of argument. He has really made me understand what the evolution is all about. I know that there is debate about the specifics, but really Dawkins must be heralded as one of the great conveyors of biology to the popular adience. He takes jabs against creationists and all theists as usual, but it is somewhat less venomous in
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Mar 05, 2011
Lee
rated it:
While I read different genres, I only review books with a religious content. So, if I may be excused for one of my “liberal Christian rants,” let me say this: It’s a sad day when a book about evolution earns a spot on the shelves of a religion blog. It simply astounds me that half of all Americans still do not believe in evolution. The evidence is so overwhelmingly against a young earth that if Christianity is going to survive, it must pull its head out of the sand and reinterpret the Bible’s cr
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(2 people liked it)
Jan 22, 2011
Antonio
rated it:
A grande família
Todos já ouviram dizer que o homem e o macaco são parentes próximos, quer gostem da idéia, quer não. Mas até entre aqueles que a aceitaram haverá quem se surpreenda ao serem lembrados que tambêm têm parentesco, mais ou menos distante, com o tatu, o ornitorrinco, o pavão, a lampreia, o gafanhoto, a esponja, os fungos, as plantas e até as mais nocivas das bactérias.
Em "Ancestor’s Tale" ("A Fábula do Ancestral"), o zoólogo britânico Richard Dawkins More...
Todos já ouviram dizer que o homem e o macaco são parentes próximos, quer gostem da idéia, quer não. Mas até entre aqueles que a aceitaram haverá quem se surpreenda ao serem lembrados que tambêm têm parentesco, mais ou menos distante, com o tatu, o ornitorrinco, o pavão, a lampreia, o gafanhoto, a esponja, os fungos, as plantas e até as mais nocivas das bactérias.
Em "Ancestor’s Tale" ("A Fábula do Ancestral"), o zoólogo britânico Richard Dawkins More...
Nov 19, 2010
Felix
rated it:
What a great story! This is Dawkins at his best, and I should know because I’ve read almost all his other works. It lacks his usual antagonistic snake-poking atheism of The God Delusion, and instead focuses purely on how life evolved, what are its mechanisms and what a wonderful world we live in. In Moby Dick Ishmael tells us that whales are a type of fish. I scoffed at this at the time, but Dawkins has shown me that he was right – for all mammals a subset of fish-kind (and reptile-kind in turn)
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Feb 12, 2010
Charles
rated it:
Great History of evolution! My favorite of Dawkins' books, because it processes every little peice of information, leaving no rock unturned. Being 700 or so pages it took me a while to finish it, but my hours were not wasted. It goes through every known evolutionary split from us now, to billions of years ago with some of the first life on earth. It covers the full spread of biological diversity and the different inventions of nature, like how a Platypus uses electromagnetic waves to detect smal
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Jun 28, 2009
Ringthebells
rated it:
I loved this book! I learned so much from it -- my knowledge of evolutionary biology pretty much stopped at a general high school biology course taken 14 years ago, so Dawkins really took me on a whirlwind tour. I had no idea that mice are more closely related to us than they are to cats, for instance!
I liked the narrative conceit, too, that we humans are pilgrims travelling backwards along our family tree, meeting up with the other living "pilgrims" at points of common a More...
I liked the narrative conceit, too, that we humans are pilgrims travelling backwards along our family tree, meeting up with the other living "pilgrims" at points of common a More...
Jan 03, 2011
Mark
rated it:
I'm about half way through.
This book has an innovative but boring/inane plot, just as did it's predecsssor, Pilgrim's Progress. Also like that novel, this one shines in it's anecdotes:
* Peacock tails and other sexually selected traits are just runaway instabilities.
* The platypus has ultra-sensitive lightning detection in it's bill: it can sense your muscles twitching.
* Some birds and turtles can see FOUR primary colors.
* You have Eve's mitochondria (...and Adam's Y More...
This book has an innovative but boring/inane plot, just as did it's predecsssor, Pilgrim's Progress. Also like that novel, this one shines in it's anecdotes:
* Peacock tails and other sexually selected traits are just runaway instabilities.
* The platypus has ultra-sensitive lightning detection in it's bill: it can sense your muscles twitching.
* Some birds and turtles can see FOUR primary colors.
* You have Eve's mitochondria (...and Adam's Y More...
Feb 09, 2012
Eppursimuov3
rated it:
“Why would a Christian recommend any book by Richard Dawkins?!” you might ask. Well, when he’s not spewing out anti-religious, ultra-fundamentalist atheistic propaganda, he does come across as a really witty and brilliant writer! I commend Richard Dawkins for his restraint, making sure that this book focuses strictly on the science of evolution rather than on his own metaphysical conclusions. It is an engaging read on the history of evolution of life on earth. But what makes it unique is the way
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Aug 17, 2011
Anna
rated it:
"Look at life from our perspective, and you eukaryotes will soon cease giving yourself such airs. You bipedal apes, you stump-tailed tree-shrews, you desiccated lobe-fins, you vertebrated worms, you Hoxed-up sponges, you newcomers on the block, you eukaryotes, you barely distinguishable congregations of a monotonously narrow parish, you are little more than fancy froth on the surface of bacterial life. Why, the very cells that build you are themselves colonies of bacteria, replaying the sam
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Aug 12, 2011
Derek
rated it:
I should say first that I am a great fan of Richard Dawkins. Looking back many years to my first reading of The Selfish Gene, I can say honestly that it changed my life. I've read all his other books and was eager to read this one.
But for the first time I am a little disappointed. It may be churlish to criticize a book of such ambition but this really isn't vintage Dawkins.
The book makes a brave attempt to trace one chain back in time through ancestors common to Homo sapiens More...
But for the first time I am a little disappointed. It may be churlish to criticize a book of such ambition but this really isn't vintage Dawkins.
The book makes a brave attempt to trace one chain back in time through ancestors common to Homo sapiens More...
