The Ancestor's Tale: A Pilgrimage to the Dawn of Life

One of the most detailed books on evolution for a non scientific publicum I have ever seen. And even for biologists, it has lots of information and interesting insights.The way Dawkins leads the reader through a backwards history of human evolution is original and amusing. The points he chooses as "rendevouz" are used to explain basic concepts in biology, evolution and related sciences, even good explanations on mathematical tools used in evolutionary studies.After he completes the backwards journey to the origins of life, the last quarter of the book is a little "dry" to read, but this is probably a misperception due to the easy reading of the rest of the book.A good reading for curious non-biologist and also for biologist looking for new ways to teach evolution.

Richard Dawkins has with his original assistant and now full co-author created a definitive look at how we got here as Homo sapiens from our assumed start billions of years ago. As before, they start now and march back through time as pilgrims searching for our origin.

As with all of his books that I've read Dawkins is thorough in his arguments to the point of slow and long winded. Luckily the content is such that thoroughness is not only needed, but desired, and the topic so fascinating and well described by Dawkins that you are absorbed by the book anyway.If you want an everyday understanding of evolution this is the place to go, but be prepared to put some time in.

I bought the first edition of this book several times, and shared with friends, and they all loved it. When the new version came out, I bought it and enjoyed it greatly as well. While Dawkins may be controversial in other milieus, here is an expert with the gift of evolutionary storytelling. This book is one of my all-time favorites.

And get a good plastic cover for it, because you will read and read it, or in it (nobody will read it like a novel; perhaps I read it the way a religious person might thumb daily through their sacred text).It presents a fascinating perspective, how we are related to other apes, to Cretaceous mammals, to tetrapods crawling out of the ocean, to Devonian fish, to the first eucaryotes, and, along the way, how those other relatives branched out too, all illustrated by an anthro-centered tree, with three centuries (since Linnaeus) of biologic taxonomy in stunning illustrations. Mathematicians shut out of the Nobel roster created their own prizes recognizing key advances, historians suck their thumbs; this book should have provoked creation of a Prize, which might extend to say EO Wilsons' ant books, any number of brilliant scientific works oriented to the general reader, and might be named the Dawkins Prize.

This is a splendid book. The concept is original using Chaucer's Caterbury Tales as a loose structure for the book. What appealed to me was the retrograde search through paleontology for the last common ancestor. Although this is a widely addressed topic, the process of taking the reader on a backwards journey, gradually meeting fellow pilgrims (related species) kept me hooked throughout. The book was also refreshingly (almost) devoid of Dawkins' usual religious rants, with his atheism explicit, but not expressed with his previous missionary zeal. For anyone with an interest in evolution, this is an excellent read.

This is another great read by Richard Dawkins. His knowledge of the plant and animal world nicely illustrate a walk back in time, reviewing the common ancestors of man, as if they were pilgrims telling tales in Chaucers "Canterbury Tales". For anyone interested in the greatest show on Earth (Evolution), this is another great installment of that fabulous tale. A must read for all those who truly appreciate life and the scientific endeavor.

This is one of the best books I have ever read. Dawkins writes with passion and delivers the most amazing story ever told: the story of our ancestry. It is one of those books that made me excited to find out what was going to happen next.

Texto excelente; Dawkins é um grane didata, dotado de muito talento para a escrita e de grande conhecimento acerca das ideias que defende.

This book embarks you on a journey of our long forgotten ancestors and other geographical events that gives rise to us. After reading this book I feel greatful to be alive and to understand the wonders of the natural world.These science books really opens our eyes to the wonders of this universe and how insignificant we are in the grand scale of things.I am amazed, greatful and more humble towards the natural world after reading this wonderful science literature.A huge thanks to the authors for giving us such in depth and complex information in an easy to understand way.This was one hell of a pilgrimage!

Even though the starting point is our (of humans) branch, this is the story of all living beings, and of all that ever lived. The book shows where we all come from, how we are all related and the long way we have come. This is a truly beautiful and mature review of life as we know it.Differently from other Dawkins' books such as The selfish gene and The extended phenotype, which are landmarks in the field, this book shifts no paradigms. Yet, perhaps exactly because of this, The ancestor's tale is a much more readable and enjoyable book.The book starts the pilgrimage from our own ancestors towards the origin of life. In this winding road every chapter is a crossroad "where" the last common ancestor of ours and of other organisms lived. For most converging branches the authors include one or more tales, selected examples about fascinating features that our cousins evolved to survive in this world and about how we know when and why it happened. Closing the book after finishing it, people like myself, a layman, get the rewarding feeling that we grasp the whole picture even without being experts in the field.A highly suggested read.

Este libro es un increíble viaje al pasado en el que de forma muy entretenida se va analizando todos los coancestros que dieron lugar al humano moderno hasta terminar en las formas de vida más primitivas e incluso el probable origen de la vida en la tierra.

Few authors can write books on science which are entertaining and informative in equal measure. Dawkins is a man of great knowledge and he want's to share what he knows. Sometimes his discursive style requires that you follow lateral thought quite a long way from the original subject. But if you have the patience it is all worth reading. Full of anecdotes and curiosities, he nevertheless takes you in reverse through 4 billion years of biology; no mean feat. He even has a go at the nature of the very first replicating organisms, which many duck out of. Talking of which, he has a stab at human racial genetics too, which is thin ice these days. Overall an important book and a good read.