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metatree's review against another edition
4.0
Richard Dawkins, whatever you may think of him otherwise, is a master story teller. In this book he tells the tale of a number of species in order to illustrate the relatedness of all life on earth. It is a good entry for people who want to understand how we evolved and we fit into the diversity of life.
darcywolf's review against another edition
5.0
wow. an wonderful trip back down the evolutionary tree. from man to the earliest organisms, stops are made regularly to talk about our ancestors. A great mix of science and personal antidotes that keep the reader interested.
colinmann's review against another edition
5.0
My reaction to this book was similar to the first time I read Carl Sagan's Cosmos. Why hadn't I read this earlier! This book is astounding. Thoroughly engaging - even the minutia about how chromosomes line up (ok, some of it wasn't exciting as others). It also probably helps I have a degree in ecology/evolution but this would excite anyone interested in a slightly more in depth science book. Dawkins and Wong make this completely approachable. If you want to contemplate how we humans became human, this is a great place to start.
monkeelino's review against another edition
4.0
The back of this book is heaped with praise for Dawkins prose. Personally, I find his writing a bit uneven--wonderful at times and then downright longwinded and smitten with itself. It took me about 120 pages to really get into this, which was the point where he gets beyond our most common concestors (the apes and monkeys). His frequent asides against creationists and divine explanations for evolution seem redundant given that his scientific explanation do more than hold their own in such arguments. All that being said, it is a fascinating journey he takes the reader on going all the way back to the origins of life on this planet. He does a wonderful job of weaving in facts and anecdotes, as well as painting a vivid picture within each of the "tales" his "pilgrims" tell the reader (he uses the Canterbury Tales as a model for the telling of our evolutionary history). His passion and knowledge are infectious.
docpacey's review against another edition
5.0
The sheer amount of information packed into this book would have to be daunting to a reader not initiated into the language of biology, but any fan of Darwin, Stephen Jay Gould or E.O. Wilson (to name a few) will revel in the way that Dawkins journeys from the tip of the branch (modern man) to the trunk of the tree at the beginning of all life on earth.
Each waypoint in the journey is a junction at which another branch of life rejoins ours on the way to the trunk at life's earliest moment, and is an opportunity for Dawkins to explore nearly every aspect of the way science has categorized, discovered, studied and theorized upon the vast diversity of beings that do and have inhabited our planet.
It's an amazing contrast to The Sixth Extinction that I finished just prior.
Each waypoint in the journey is a junction at which another branch of life rejoins ours on the way to the trunk at life's earliest moment, and is an opportunity for Dawkins to explore nearly every aspect of the way science has categorized, discovered, studied and theorized upon the vast diversity of beings that do and have inhabited our planet.
It's an amazing contrast to The Sixth Extinction that I finished just prior.
ljc51014's review against another edition
5.0
Dawkins traces backwards in time to show how all life shares common ancestors. In the process of doing so he presents fascinating ideas. for ex the idea that if you go back far enough in time then an animal is either ancestor to all humans or none because evolution would not carry out the exact same path down two separate trails resulting in humans both times. Using a mathematical model they could figure out how long ago was the 1st woman who is related to all present humans and how long ago was the 1st man. (They are not a couple and the person changes as you add other human populations)
Sponge cells can be separated in a sieve and will join back together to form a new animal!
Complicated and intriguing and thought provoking, I had to read it twice and still could read it again.
Sponge cells can be separated in a sieve and will join back together to form a new animal!
Complicated and intriguing and thought provoking, I had to read it twice and still could read it again.
borgeshelena's review against another edition
3.0
I was super enjoying it, the idea of separating rendezvous and telling tales amused me a lot! But the last chapter! Eew, made me so tired, couldn't wait to finish it!
zeh's review against another edition
5.0
Extremely verbose, but extremely informative (and at times even funny) dump of information by an author that has an equally extreme care about knowledge derived from true facts. Enlightening and humbling.