While I read different genres, I only review books with a religious content. & What an interesting way to write a book! Eve. 'This does not imply that stars exist in order to make us. 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. In this slim but well-packed book, Mancuso (Plant Science/Univ. Haldane once put it, “The universe is not only queerer than we suppose; it is queerer than we can suppose.” Mostly, though, Bryson renders clear the evolution of continental drift, atomic structure, singularity, the extinction of the dinosaur, and a mighty host of other subjects in self-contained chapters that can be taken at a bite, rather than read wholesale. We learn that 40 percent of all mammal species are rodents; that hippos are closer to whales than pigs; that aye-ayes have fingers like an Arthur Rackham witch; and that, among all creatures, it is bacteria that invented the wheel. They are wrong, of course, for they completely miss the gradual, cumulative nature of natural selection. presents an illuminating and surprisingly lively study of plant life. This is the 2016, revised edition of this fabulous book. Bill Bryson. All human beings, and other animals if they could read, This is my favorite book in the whole world. I was hoping for a more concise account. Piqued by his own ignorance on these matters, he’s egged on even more so by the people who’ve figured out—or think they’ve figured out—such things as what is in the center of the Earth. Goodreads helps you keep track of books you want to read. I really enjoyed it. It starts from us "moderns" and goes back to our closer cousins, all the way back to the common ancestor of all life on Earth. Also, Dawkins is very readable. SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY, by He moves back through time, stopping occasionally so we humans can be joined by related species -- first by chimpanzees, which share a common ancestor with us six million to seven million years ago, then by gorillas, orangutans, gibbons, Old World monkeys and so on. But the ancestors of today's platypuses were not frozen in time. They represent a narrowing-down from reality, an impoverishment of what the real world has to offer.”, “More poignant for us, at Laetoli in Tanzania are the companionable footprints of three real hominids, probably Australopithecus afarensis, walking together 3.6 million years ago in what was then fresh volcanic ash. The first edition of the novel was published in 2004, and was written by Richard Dawkins. The scientists drew it as a kind of a surreal bicycle wheel, each species represented as a tip of a branch along its rim. Reviewed in the United States on June 5, 2020. 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. These are some of the most important, most fascinating lines of research in evolutionary biology, but Dawkins skims over them. A jellyfish, on the other hand, doesn't exactly seem like family. By eliminating that artificial scheme, he probably could have included many more fascinating and poorly known (to the lay reader) stories. It is somewhat tedious at times, yet is very informative and thought provoking. Yet outside of systematics circles, few people understand how scientists assemble the tree of life, or use it to learn how life has evolved. 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. Together, the tales add up to an encyclopedia that sheds light on some of the stranger features of the tree of life. Buy The Ancestor's Tale at the Guardian bookshop. © Copyright 2020 Kirkus Media LLC. Richard Dawkins would have us believe otherwise. It is therefore no accident, says Dawkins, that we see stars in our sky, for stars are a necessary part of any universe capable of generating us.

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