The Ancestor's Tale PDF Download

Author: Richard Dawkins
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
ISBN: 9780618619160
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 696

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Book Description
A renowned biologist provides a sweeping chronicle of more than four billion years of life on Earth, shedding new light on evolutionary theory and history, sexual selection, speciation, extinction, and genetics.

Author: Danielle Trussoni
Publisher: HarperCollins
ISBN: 0062912798
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 384

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Book Description
"A lushly written, dream-like modern gothic with as many dark turns and twists as the Montebianco family tree has branches. Welcome to the family." – Paul Tremblay, bestselling author of Survivor Song After a DNA test reveals that Alberta “Bert” Monte is the sole heir of a wealthy noble family in the Italian Alps, she leaves New York to visit the family estate: Montebianco Castle, a centuries-old compound isolated in the mountains. What appeared to be a fairy tale inheritance, however, soon turns into a nightmare as Bert begins to uncover the dark legacy of her family: the truth about the abandoned village at the base of the castle; the whispers of stolen children; and the rumors of a legendary monster in the mountains. As Bert unravels the truth, she learns that her true inheritance lies not in a noble title or ancestral treasures, but in her very genes, and now she must choose between preserving a secret centuries in the keeping or abandoning it forever. “Vivid and uncanny…makes the most of Trussoni’s signature blend of science, myth, and mystery.” —Deborah Harkness, bestselling author of A Discovery of Witches "Inventive and entertaining." — People “A Gothic Extravaganza.” —Kirkus

Author: Lori Holmes
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781838029821
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 240

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Book Description
As the blood settles into the snow, Rebaa's life will never be the same again. Lost, alone and damingly burdened with her murdered lover's Forbidden offspring, Rebaa must learn to survive in a freezing and hostile world. Hunted by a murderous chieftain, a man hell-bent on possessing her mysterious powers for his own, Rebaa calls upon all of her cunning and extraordinary gifts to evade capture. Facing relentless danger, Rebaa must attempt to reach the one place that surely promises salvation; she can only hope that her ancestral home is the haven she needs it to be... But can any haven truly exist for one who bears...The Forbidden?

Author: Richard Dawkins
Publisher: Random House
ISBN: 147357949X
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 464

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Book Description
'A rich feast of his essays, reviews, forewords, squibs and conversations, in which talent and passion are married to deep knowledge.' Matt Ridley 'Enjoy the unfailing clarity of his thought and prose, as well as the grandeur of his vision of life on Earth.' - Mark Cocker, Spectator 'Richard Dawkins is a thunderously gifted science writer.' Sunday Times Including conversations with Neil DeGrasse Tyson, Steven Pinker, Matt Ridley and more, this is an essential guide to the most exciting ideas of our time and their proponents from our most brilliant science communicator. Books Do Furnish a Life is divided by theme, including celebrating nature, exploring humanity, and interrogating faith. For the first time, it brings together Richard Dawkins' forewords, afterwords and introductions to the work of some of the leading thinkers of our age - Carl Sagan, Lawrence Krauss, Jacob Bronowski, Lewis Wolpert - with a selection of his reviews to provide an electrifying celebration of science writing, both fiction and non-fiction. It is also a sparkling addition to Dawkins' own remarkable canon of work. Plenty of other scientists write well, but no one writes like Dawkins... here is Dawkins the teacher, the scholar, the polemicist, the joker, the aesthete, the poet, the satirist, the man of compassion as well as indignation, the slayer of superstition and, above all, the scientist. - Areo Magazine

Author: Tanya M. Smith
Publisher: MIT Press
ISBN: 0262348934
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 297

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Book Description
What human teeth can tell us about our evolution, development, and behavior . . . This fascinating, accessible study will “put a smile on your face with its weird facts about primate dentistry and the shrinking grins of modern-day humans” (Washington Post). Our teeth have intriguing stories to tell. These sophisticated time machines record growth, diet, and evolutionary history as clearly as tree rings map a redwood's lifespan. Each day of childhood is etched into tooth crowns and roots—capturing birth, nursing history, environmental clues, and illnesses. The study of ancient, fossilized teeth sheds light on how our ancestors grew up, how we evolved, and how prehistoric cultural transitions continue to affect humans today. In The Tales Teeth Tell, biological anthropologist Tanya Smith offers an engaging and surprising look at what teeth tell us about the evolution of primates—including our own uniqueness. Humans’ impressive set of varied teeth provides a multipurpose toolkit honed by the diet choices of our mammalian ancestors. Fossil teeth, highly resilient because of their substantial mineral content, are all that is left of some long-extinct species. Smith explains how researchers employ painstaking techniques to coax microscopic secrets from these enigmatic remains. Counting tiny daily lines provides a way to estimate age that is more powerful than any other forensic technique. Dental plaque—so carefully removed by dental hygienists today—records our ancestors' behavior and health in the form of fossilized food particles and bacteria, including their DNA. Smith also traces the grisly origins of dentistry, reveals that the urge to pick one’s teeth is not unique to humans, and illuminates the age-old pursuit of “dental art.” The book is generously illustrated with original photographs, many in color.

Author: Richard Dawkins
Publisher: HMH
ISBN: 0547347359
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 355

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From the New York Times–bestselling author of Science in the Soul. “If any recent writing about science is poetic, it is this” (The Wall Street Journal). Did Sir Isaac Newton “unweave the rainbow” by reducing it to its prismatic colors, as John Keats contended? Did he, in other words, diminish beauty? Far from it, says acclaimed scientist Richard Dawkins; Newton’s unweaving is the key too much of modern astronomy and to the breathtaking poetry of modern cosmology. Mysteries don’t lose their poetry because they are solved: the solution often is more beautiful than the puzzle, uncovering deeper mysteries. With the wit, insight, and spellbinding prose that have made him a bestselling author, Dawkins takes up the most important and compelling topics in modern science, from astronomy and genetics to language and virtual reality, combining them in a landmark statement of the human appetite for wonder. This is the book Dawkins was meant to write: A brilliant assessment of what science is (and isn’t), a tribute to science not because it is useful but because it is uplifting. “A love letter to science, an attempt to counter the perception that science is cold and devoid of aesthetic sensibility . . . Rich with metaphor, passionate arguments, wry humor, colorful examples, and unexpected connections, Dawkins’ prose can be mesmerizing.” —San Francisco Chronicle “Brilliance and wit.” —The New Yorker

Author: Aminatta Forna
Publisher: A&C Black
ISBN: 1408825961
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 367

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Book Description
Abie follows the arc of a letter from London back to Africa to a coffee plantation that now could be hers if she wants it. Standing among the ruined groves she strains to hear the sound of the past, but the layers of years are too many. Thus begins the gathering of her family's history through the tales of her aunts - four women born to four different wives of a wealthy plantation owner, her grandfather. Asana, Mariama, Hawa and Serah: theirs is the story of a nation, a family and four women's attempts to alter the course of her own destiny.

Author: Eviatar Zerubavel
Publisher: OUP USA
ISBN: 0199773955
Category : Family & Relationships
Languages : en
Pages : 239

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Book Description
Noted social scientist Eviatar Zerubavel casts a critical eye on how we trace our past-individually and collectively arguing that rather than simply find out who our ancestors are from genetics or history, we actually create the stories that make them our ancestors.

Author: Scott Sigler
Publisher: Crown
ISBN: 0307589358
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 434

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Book Description
“The ancestors are out there…you have to believe me.” From acclaimed author Scott Sigler—New York Times bestselling creator of Infected and Contagious—comes a tale of genetic experimentation’s worst nightmare come true. Every five minutes, a transplant candidate dies while waiting for a heart, a liver, a kidney. Imagine a technology that could provide those life-saving transplant organs for a nominal fee ... and imagine what a company would do to get a monopoly on that technology. On a remote island in the Canadian Arctic, PJ Colding leads a group of geneticists who have discovered this holy grail of medicine. By reverse-engineering the genomes of thousands of mammals, Colding's team has dialed back the evolutionary clock to re-create humankind’s common ancestor. The method? Illegal. The result? A computer-engineered living creature, an animal whose organs can be implanted in any person, and with no chance of transplant rejection. There's just one problem: these ancestors are not the docile herd animals that Colding's team envisioned. Instead, Colding’s work has given birth to something big, something evil. With these killer creatures on the prowl, Colding and the woman he loves must fight to survive — even as government agents close in to shut the project down, and the deep-pocketed company backing this research proves to have its own cold-blooded agenda. As the creators become the prey in the ultimate battle for survival, Scott Sigler takes readers on the ultimate thrill-ride—and offers a chilling cautionary account of what can happen when hubris, greed, and madness drive scientific experimentation past the brink of reason.

Author: Brandon Massey
Publisher: Dafina
ISBN: 0758264615
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 324

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Book Description
Dead. Some evils are so great that they transcend death. In Brandon Massey's "The Patriarch," a young writer travels to the hushed backwoods of Mississippi, where dangerous secrets surface as a generations-old feud comes to bone-chilling new life. . . Buried. The souls of the mistreated always find a way to be heard. In L.A. Banks's "Ev'ry Shut Eye Ain't Sleep," violent visions haunt a man--until he's handed an opportunity to right the wrongs of the past and prevent unspeakable acts from occurring once again. . . Forgotten. When horrors are covered up and lost, our ancestors must find a way--even in death--to tell their tales. In Tananarive Due's "Ghost Summer," ancestors haunt the nights of two children. And when a grisly discovery is made, these ancestors will make their mark on both the dead and the living. . . "Massey ventures into areas unexplored by most other black novelists. The result is artful and stunning." --Chicago Tribune "Tananarive Due is creating classics." --Tina McElroy Ansa "Banks's writing is lush and detailed, fully bringing her characters to life (or unlife), weaving a complex world of Good vs. Evil with its own intricate hierarchy." --Fangoria Magazine