Audio Books

Audio books read by Richard Dawkins - many jointly with Lalla Ward.

The Darwin Selection (Csa Word Double Bill)

"Having Richard Dawins read it makes a huge difference...if Darwin via Dawkins tells me that the laws of co-relative genetics decree that cats with blue eyes are often deaf, that hairless dogs have bad teeth and that pigeons with short beaks have small feet, I'll buy that..." Sue Arnold, The Guardian. "Dawkins reads engagingly, and the whole effect is like David Attenborough without the pictures" - Karen Robinson, The Sunday Times "Dawkins' narration and abridgement makes the text more accessible and precise" - The Bookseller

This 2-title plus bonus audio and printed material 'Dawkins-reads-Darwin' set includes both "On the Origin of Species" and "The Voyage of the Beagle" and exclusive audio of Richard Dawkins reading from his Royal Society essay and an additional extra printed information booklet. On "On the Origin of Species": 'One of the most arresting narrations of non-fiction I have ever heard...the great naturalist's arguments come over with lucidity and charm' - Christina Hardyment, "The Times". '[Dawkins'] light, chatty, un-professorial voice makes natural selection as easy to digest as chick lit' - "The Guardian" on "The Voyage of The Beagle". 'Dawkins' voice is remarkably youthful, just right for the eager Beagler' - "The Oldie". 'It reads more like an adventure story than the meticulous scientific research that 20 years later became his famously controversial, mould-breaking treatise on evolutionary biology' - "The Guardian".

The Voyage of the "Beagle": Journals and Remarks (Csa Word Classic)

Product Description
Read by Richard Dawkins, world-renowned authority on Darwin and author of best-selling books including "The God Delusion". A definite precursor to "On The Origin of Species", this non-fiction travel journal is a fascinating record of Darwin's observations of far-flung civilisations and the flora, fauna and human life he found there. His journey took in: Santiago - Cape Verde Islands; Saint Peter and Paul Rocks; Rio de Janeiro; Maldonado; Rio Negro to Bahia Blanca; Bahia Blanca; Bahia Blanca to Buenos Aires; Buenos Aires and St. Fe; Banda Oriental and Patagonia; Santa Cruz, Patagonia, and The Falkland Islands; Tierra del Fuego; Strait of Magellan; Climate of the Southern Coasts; Central Chile; Chiloe Island and Chonos Islands; Concepcion: Great Earthquake; Passage of the Cordillera; Northern Chile and Peru Galapagos; Archipelago Tahiti and New Zealand; Australia; Keeling Island - Coral Formations; and Mauritius to England. Darwin spent much of the voyage exploring on-land rather than at sea, and his explorations led to the beginnings of 'evolutionary' theories. He observed, for example, how finches' beaks varied and seemed localized in shape and form to particular islands or climates. Thus emerged the notion that a kind of 'natural selection' rather than a divine power may be responsible - each creature adapting physically to its particular environment over generations. This is an incredibly important and enlightening non-fiction work.

About the Author
Charles Darwin (1809-82) celebrates both his 200th birthday and 150 years since first publication of his world-changing work On The Origin of Species in 2009. Darwin first presented the ideas of evolution and natural selection and his works are still controversial today due to the perceived clash between his scientific findings and religious beliefs worldwide.

On the Origin of Species

From Publishers Weekly
Starred Review. Originally published in 1859, Darwin's revolutionary idea is revisited in this spirited and profoundly enthralling reading by Professor Richard Dawkins, who in reading Darwin's material aloud manages to rediscover old ideas and unearth some dramatic subtleties in his prose. Dawkins offers a well-pronounced, pitch-perfect delivery and smartly never attempts to turn the reading into a performance from Darwin's point of view. Instead, Dawkins delivers the material from his own context as a modern-day interpreter of the classical work. Dawkins also splendidly adapts this abridgment, leaving out sections of Darwin's original theories that have been discredited by modern science. Dawkins says he believes his alterations are what Darwin himself would have wished for the recording, and the final result is an absolutely astounding glimpse into life as we know it. (Aug.) Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Review
"Are they needed? To be sure. The Darwinian industry, industrious though it is, has failed to provide texts of more than a handful of Darwin's books. If you want to know what Darwin said about barnacles (still an essential reference to cirripedists, apart from any historical importance) you are forced to search shelves, or wait while someone does it for you; some have been in print for a century; various reprints have appeared and since vanished." Eric Korn, Times Literary Supplement "Historians, scientists, historians of science, and their students all have reasons to appreciate the care that went into editing and publishing The Works of Charles Darwin." Muriel L. Blaisdell, Isis --This text refers to the Paperback edition.

The God Delusion [Audiobook, CD, Unabridged] [Audio CD]

Read by Richard Dawkins and Lalla Ward

From Publishers Weekly
The antireligion wars started by Daniel Dennett and Sam Harris will heat up even more with this salvo from celebrated Oxford biologist Dawkins. For a scientist who criticizes religion for its intolerance, Dawkins has written a surprisingly intolerant book, full of scorn for religion and those who believe. But Dawkins, who gave us the selfish gene, anticipates this criticism. He says it's the scientist and humanist in him that makes him hostile to religions—fundamentalist Christianity and Islam come in for the most opprobrium—that close people's minds to scientific truth, oppress women and abuse children psychologically with the notion of eternal damnation. While Dawkins can be witty, even confirmed atheists who agree with his advocacy of science and vigorous rationalism may have trouble stomaching some of the rhetoric: the biblical Yahweh is "psychotic," Aquinas's proofs of God's existence are "fatuous" and religion generally is "nonsense." The most effective chapters are those in which Dawkins calms down, for instance, drawing on evolution to disprove the ideas behind intelligent design. In other chapters, he attempts to construct a scientific scaffolding for atheism, such as using evolution again to rebut the notion that without God there can be no morality. He insists that religion is a divisive and oppressive force, but he is less convincing in arguing that the world would be better and more peaceful without it. (Oct. 18) Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

From Scientific American
Richard Dawkins, in The God Delusion, tells of his exasperation with colleagues who try to play both sides of the street: looking to science for justification of their religious convictions while evading the most difficult implications—the existence of a prime mover sophisticated enough to create and run the universe, "to say nothing of mind reading millions of humans simultaneously." Such an entity, he argues, would have to be extremely complex, raising the question of how it came into existence, how it communicates —through spiritons!—and where it resides. Dawkins is frequently dismissed as a bully, but he is only putting theological doctrines to the same kind of scrutiny that any scientific theory must withstand. No one who has witnessed the merciless dissection of a new paper in physics would describe the atmosphere as overly polite.

The God Delusion - Audible.co.uk

The Greatest Show on Earth

From Publishers Weekly
SignatureReviewed by Jonah Lehrer Richard Dawkins begins The Greatest Show on Earth with a short history of his writing career. He explains that all of his previous books have naïvely assumed the fact of evolution, which meant that he never got around to laying out the evidence that it [evolution] is true. This shouldn't be too surprising: science is an edifice of tested assumptions, and just as physicists must assume the truth of gravity before moving on to quantum mechanics, so do biologists depend on the reality of evolution. It's the theory that makes every other theory possible.Yet Dawkins also came to realize that a disturbingly large percentage of the American and British public didn't share his enthusiasm for evolution. In fact, they actively abhorred the idea, since it seemed to contradict the Bible and diminish the role of God. So Dawkins decided to write a book for these history-deniers, in which he would dispassionately demonstrate the truth of evolution beyond sane, informed, intelligent doubt.After only a few pages of The Greatest Show on Earth, however, it becomes clear that Dawkins doesn't do dispassionate, and that he's not particularly interested in convincing believers to believe in evolution. He repeatedly compares creationists and Holocaust deniers, which is a peculiar way of reaching out to the other side. Elsewhere, Dawkins calls those who don't subscribe to evolution ignorant, fatuously ignorant and ridiculous. All of which raises the point: who, exactly, is supposed to read this book? Is Dawkins preaching to the choir or trying to convert the uninformed? While The Greatest Show on Earth might fail as a work of persuasive rhetoric—Dawkins is too angry and acerbic to convince his opponents—it succeeds as an encyclopedic summary of evolutionary biology. If Charles Darwin walked into a 21st-century bookstore and wanted to know how his theory had fared, this is the book he should pick up.Dawkins remains a superb translator of complex scientific concepts. It doesn't matter if he's spinning metaphors for the fossil record (like a spy camera in a murder trial) or deftly explaining the method by which scientists measure the genetic difference between distinct species: he has a way of making the drollest details feel like a revelation. Even if one already believes in the survival of the fittest, there is something thrilling about learning that the hoof of a horse is homologous to the fingernail of the human middle finger, or that some dinosaurs had a second brain of ganglion cells in their pelvis, which helped compensate for the tiny brain in their head. As Darwin famously noted, There is grandeur in this view of life. What Dawkins demonstrates is that this view of life isn't just grand: it's also undeniably true. Color illus. (Sept. 29)Jonah Lehrer is the author of How We Decide and Proust Was a Neuroscientist.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

From Bookmarks Magazine
"Like a detective reconstructing a crime" (San Francisco Chronicle), Dawkins amasses a mountain of evidence in this richly illustrated, enormously readable explanation of the theory of evolution. Though Dawkins may have softened his attitude toward those who can reconcile their religious beliefs with evolution, he still harbors great hostility toward its detractors, equating them to Holocaust deniers—a label that riled the New York Times Book Review. Objecting to Dawkins's abrasive dogmatism, many critics felt that the biologist is at his best when he forgets his opponents and focuses on the science. He is indeed a master of explaining complex scientific ideas to nonscientific readers, and though The Greatest Show on Earth may not be his best book, it is a well-written, captivating review of the science behind the theory. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.