An absolute must read for any literate primate
This book is by no means easy reading, so give yourself some time. It is well written and Dawkins has, thankfully, grown out of his defensive tone that I found made The Extended Phenotype: The Long Reach of the Gene [EXTENDED PHENOTYPE REV/E] rather hard to read.
If you're a Prokaryote you may find this book a bit biased. If you're a mammal but not a primate, the first several chapters will be a bit boring but you'll get into it as you get further on. For me, I found it gripping right from the start.
Great book
I wanted to learn more about evolution, and picked up this book. Make sure you re-read anything that confuses you so you can soak up the information when/if you get into a conversation about evolution some day. Furthermore, I still believe in God, even though I belive in evolution. Just thought i'd state that point.
An Amazing Journey
The Ancestor's Tale tells an amazing story, going back in time, of our distant ancestors. The book consists of 39 "Rendezvous" points where a set of species joins up with humans. I found myself being constantly amazed by the tales of our distant ancestor's. As I got further into the book I was always eager to find out what the next rendezvous with our ancestors would be.
Dawkins has a talent for taking an incredibly complex topic such as evolution and telling a tale that both stuns and educates. He maintains a style of writing that is always easy to read and understand while being packed full of information. Dawkins points out that humans aren't the end goal for evolution, but just another step influenced by natural selection. It is easy to fall into the thinking that we humans are somehow more "evolved" than other modern species, but really every living thing has evolved from the same ancestors and is equally "evolved", we have just evolved differently. He continues to reinforce this way of thinking throughout the book.
If you have any interest at all in how evolution works or what our distant ancestors were like then read this book.
Entertaining and Fun Read
Dawkins' exposition of the history of evolution was surprisingly entertaining and fun to read. Although at times a bit technical for a non-specialist reader, on the whole the book is a very easy read for such a dense topic.
My only gripe with the book is Dawkins' brief foray into philosophy in one of the Salamander's Tale -- in particular, a shockingly ill-informed critique of Plato's Theory of Forms and Ideas. Dawkins' misconceptions could be quickly cleared up by skimming through the _Phaedo_ (particularly 100b-d & 102b). However, despite his ignorant character assassination attempt on Plato, I agreed with Dawkins' overall point about the "tyranny of the discontinuous mind" (if not its purported origins).
In summary, I really enjoyed this book, and would highly recommend it to anyone interested in mankind's ancestors and evolution.
Can we get an abridged version?
If you went through the book, and removed every reference to a tail that had come before or would come later in the book you would probably shave off at least 50 pages. Indeed at times it seems as if he is just listing off what he said in previous chapters, there were three chapters in a row that referenced the same chapter to come later for the same reason. Outside of that it is written in Dawkins standard form of eloquence and is a great read.
(193 reviews)
