The Origin of Species

By: Charles Darwin

Narrated by: David Case

One of the most famous and influential books of its (or any) time, The Origin of Species is, surprisingly, little read. True enough, most people know what it says, or think they do, at any rate. The first comprehensive statement of the theory of natural selection, it does, indeed, provide the basic argument and demonstration of what we think of as Darwinism.

Not quite offering the misleading tautological Spencerian claim of "survival of the fittest", or the claim that man descends from monkeys (a typical perversion of the understanding of natural selection), the book did turn much of the world and how man thinks about it upside down. It is, well more than a century after its first publication, still a powerful and fascinating read.

©1992 Phoenix Recordings; (P)2006 Tantor Media, Inc.

Great concept

Darwin was a genius and the ideas in this book set the foundation to the evolution theory. Furthermore, there were some very interesting ideas present in this book, however, the overall subject matter was a little dry and too scientific, which made for a boring listen, tho that could be the fault of the not so good narrator.

surprisingly good; measured; practical

audiobook good enough 👍👍

this is thick material, actually, & was hard to retain much of the detail compared to the overall themes

Darwin here is discussing the ins outs ups & downs of evolution by natural selection, which is a hurdle or 💡 when classifying taxonomies

w/ proper classification comes more accurate predictions, & a "story" forms

this is to say, there were moments/points in the book where i diverged, such as his usage of "globe" when talking about Earth & his insistence on a Pangea-like continent

​​​​​​​another so-so surpriser was the complete lack of dinosaurs in this work, as it was published before the dino craze went wild [see: invented by charlatans]

he explains how a given area on an island, for instance, will have significantly less diversity than an equal space on a continental area, which makes logical sense

​​​​​​​he says that species drift is checked to a large extent by sterility & 'the struggle,' which eliminates the weak/ill-fitted in favor of the most adapted

​​​​​​​i'm actually fresh enough on his content to try another book

Case is tedious

I found this book very enlightening and fascinating. However, the narrator sounds pretenious and bored. He emphasis is odd and very hard to listen to. Try LibriVox.com for this title if you want a better reading of it.

Good if your interested in this type of stuff

Very scientific and hard to get through at points.

In Defence of a Glorious Narrator

What made the experience of listening to The Origin of Species the most enjoyable?

While some of the other reviews show that the narrator is not universally popular, I could listen to David Case (aka Frederick Davidson) read the London phone book. Darwin's prose is notoriously dry, but read by this narrator listening to the Origin of Species is not only intellectually exciting but an aural delight.