The Anthropology category has 155 audiobooks on Listento.it, with an average listener rating of 4.5★ across 7,559 ratings. The most-rated is Sapiens.
Saxons, Vikings, and Celts
Summary
WASPs finally get their due in this stimulating history by one of the world's leading geneticists. Saxons, Vikings, and Celts is the most illuminating book yet to be written about the genetic history of Britain and Ireland. Through a systematic, 10-year DNA survey of more than 10,000 volunteers, Bryan Sykes has traced the true genetic makeup of British Islanders and their descendants. This historical travelogue and genetic tour of the fabled isles, which includes accounts of the Roman invasions and Norman conquests, takes listeners from the Pontnewydd cave in North Wales, where a 300,000-year-old tooth was discovered, to the resting place of "The Red Lady" of Paviland, whose anatomically modern body was dyed with ochre by her grieving relatives nearly 29,000 years ago. A perfect work for anyone interested in the genealogy of England, Scotland, or Ireland, Saxons, Vikings, and Celts features a chapter specifically addressing the genetic makeup of those people in the United States who have descended from the British Isles.
©2006 Bryan Sykes (P)2006 Tantor
Tales of a Female Nomad
Summary
Tales of a Female Nomad is the story of Rita Golden Gelman, an ordinary woman who is living an extraordinary existence. At the age of 48, on the verge of a divorce, Rita left an elegant life in Los Angeles to follow her dream of connecting with people in cultures all over the world. In 1986, she sold her possessions and became a nomad, living in a Zapotec village in Mexico, sleeping with sea lions on the Galapagos Islands, and residing everywhere from thatched huts to regal palaces. She has observed orangutans in the rain forest of Borneo, visited trance healers and dens of black magic, and cooked with women on fires all over the world. Rita's example encourages us all to dust off our dreams and rediscover the joy, the exuberance, and the hidden spirit that so many of us bury when we become adults.
©2001 Rita Golden Gelman (P)2014 Tantor
The Social Conquest of Earth
Summary
Edward O. Wilson is one of the world’s preeminent biologists, a Pulitzer Prize winner, and the author of more than 25 books. The defining work in a remarkable career, The Social Conquest of Earth boldly addresses age-old questions (Where did we come from? What are we? Where are we going?) while delving into the biological sources of morality, religion, and the creative arts.
©2012 Edward O. Wilson (P)2012 Recorded Books. LLC
Lagom: The Swedish Art of Living a Balanced, Happy Life
Summary
Uncover the secrets of the Swedish philosophy of life called Lagom - meaning 'just enough'. At its core is the idea that we can strike a healthy balance with the world around us without having to make extreme changes and without denying ourselves anything. This delightful audiobook, written by Niki Brantmark, founder and curator of the award-winning interior design blog My Scandinavian Home, gives a taste of the philosophy behind Lagom and shows how to include some of the principles in our daily lives. Includes inspirational and fun ideas to help you achieve balance, well-being and a more sustainable existence. The book is divided into three sections. Introducing Lagom to your personal life includes ideas for decluttering your home, conscious buying and embracing 'slow design'. At work, take time to balance your day with a proper lunch break and a gadget-free Sabbath, while outdoor staycations in remote settings can offer relaxation you never knew possible! Lagom at home and with our families explains the art of simple pleasures - bring-a-dish entertaining at home, of shared craft activities with our children and less-stressed homework time! And finally there's Lagom in the wider world and the principles of living sustainably - as IKEA have pledged in their Live Lagom campaign. Make some small changes, like using LED lightbulbs, taking shorter showers and upcycling, and you are living a Lagom life, a rewarding but responsible life, not denying yourself or sacrificing what you love while not taking from the planet more than you need. It's just the right amount!
©2017 Niki Brantmark (P)2017 HarperCollins Publishers
It All Adds Up: The Story of People and Mathematics
Summary
The international best seller. A brief history of the mathematical ideas that have forever changed the world and the everyday people and pioneers behind them. Full of anthropological insights, amazing anecdotes and theory, It All Adds Up charts the story of our best invention yet. From our ability to calculate the passing of time to the algorithms that control our computers and much else in our lives, numbers are everywhere. They are so indispensable that we forget just how fundamental they are to our way of life. In this international best seller, Mickaël Launay mixes history and anecdotes from around the world to reveal how mathematics became pivotal to the story of humankind. It is a journey into numbers, with Launay as a guide. In museums, monuments or train stations, he uses the objects around us to explain what art can reveal about geometry, how Babylonian scholars developed one of the first complex mathematical languages and how ‘Arabic’ numbers were adopted from India. It All Adds Up also tells the story of how mapping the trajectory of an eclipse has helped to trace back one of the oldest battles in history, down to its day, how the course of the modern-day Greenwich Meridian was established and the fact that negative numbers were accepted just last century. This audiobook is a vital compendium of the great men and women of mathematics from Aristotle to Ada Lovelace, which demonstrates how this discipline shaped the written word and world. With clarity, passion and wisdom, the author unveils the unexpected and at times serendipitous ways in which big mathematical ideas were created; supporting the belief that - just like music or literature - maths should be accessible to everyone, Launay gives listeners a newfound fondness for the numbers that surround us and the rich stories they contain.
©2018 Mickael Launay (P)2018 HarperCollins Publishers
Nobody's Normal
Summary
A compassionate and captivating examination of evolving attitudes toward mental illness throughout history and the fight to end the stigma. For centuries, scientists and society cast moral judgments on anyone deemed mentally ill, confining many to asylums. In Nobody’s Normal, anthropologist Roy Richard Grinker chronicles the progress and setbacks in the struggle against mental-illness stigma - from the 18th century, through America’s major wars, and into today’s high-tech economy. Nobody’s Normal argues that stigma is a social process that can be explained through cultural history, a process that began the moment we defined mental illness, that we learn from within our communities, and that we ultimately have the power to change. Though the legacies of shame and secrecy are still with us today, Grinker writes that we are at the cusp of ending the marginalization of the mentally ill. In the 21st century, mental illnesses are fast becoming a more accepted and visible part of human diversity. Grinker infuses the book with the personal history of his family’s four generations of involvement in psychiatry, including his grandfather’s analysis with Sigmund Freud, his own daughter’s experience with autism, and culminating in his research on neurodiversity. Drawing on cutting-edge science, historical archives, and cross-cultural research in Africa and Asia, Grinker takes listeners on an international journey to discover the origins of, and variances in, our cultural response to neurodiversity. Urgent, eye-opening, and ultimately hopeful, Nobody’s Normal explains how we are transforming mental illness and offers a path to end the shadow of stigma.
©2021 Roy Richard Grinker (P)2021 Random House Audio
The Waste Land & Four Quartets
Summary
These are masterly readings, by renowned thespian Paul Schofield, of two substantial works of poetry by T.S. Eliot.
"The Wasteland", first published in 1922, is one of Eliot's most influential works and has long been on the syllabus for A-Level English Literature.
"Four Quartets" consists of four long poems, first published between 1935 and 1942. They are linked by common themes, and are individually "Burnt Norton", "East Coker", "The Dry Salvages", and "Little Gidding".
©2007 BBC Audiobooks LTD (P)2007 BBC Audiobooks LTD
Before the Dawn
Summary
Based on a groundbreaking synthesis of recent scientific findings, critically acclaimed New York Times science reporter Nicholas Wade tells a bold and provocative new story of the history of our ancient ancestors and the evolution of human nature. Just in the last three years, a flood of new scientific findings, driven by revelations discovered in the human genome, has provided compelling new answers to many long-standing mysteries about our most ancient ancestors, the people who first evolved in Africa and then went on to colonize the whole world. Nicholas Wade weaves this host of news-making findings together for the first time into an intriguing new history of the human story before the dawn of civilization. Sure to stimulate lively controversy, he makes the case for novel arguments about many hotly debated issues such as the evolution of language and race and the genetic roots of human nature, and reveals that human evolution has continued even to today. In wonderfully lively and lucid prose, Wade reveals the answers that researchers have ingeniously developed to so many puzzles: When did language emerge? When and why did we start to wear clothing? How did our ancestors break out of Africa and defeat the more physically powerful Neanderthals who stood in their way? Why did the different races evolve, and why did we come to speak so many different languages? When did we learn to live with animals and where and when did we domesticate man's first animal companions, dogs? How did human nature change during the 35,000 years between the emergence of fully modern humans and the first settlements? This will be the most talked about science book of the season.
©2006 Nicholas Wade (P)2006 Tantor Media Inc
Natasha's Dance
Summary
History on a grand scale - an enchanting masterpiece that explores the making of one of the world's most vibrant civilizations. A People's Tragedy, wrote Eric Hobsbawm, did 'more to help us understand the Russian Revolution than any other book I know'. Now, in Natasha's Dance, internationally renowned historian Orlando Figes does the same for Russian culture, summoning the myriad elements that formed a nation and held it together. Beginning in the 18th century with the building of St. Petersburg - a 'window on the West' - and culminating with the challenges posed to Russian identity by the Soviet regime, Figes examines how writers, artists and musicians grappled with the idea of Russia itself - its character, spiritual essence and destiny. He skillfully interweaves the great works - by Dostoevsky, Stravinsky, and Chagall - with folk embroidery, peasant songs, religious icons and all the customs of daily life, from food and drink to bathing habits to beliefs about the spirit world. Figes' characters range high and low: the revered Tolstoy, who left his deathbed to search for the kingdom of God, as well as the serf girl Praskovya, who became Russian opera's first superstar and shocked society by becoming her owner's wife. Like the European-schooled countess Natasha performing an impromptu folk dance in Tolstoy's War and Peace, the spirit of 'Russianness' is revealed by Figes as rich and uplifting, complex and contradictory - a powerful force that unified a vast country and proved more lasting than any Russian ruler or state.
©2018 Orlando Figes (P)2018 Audible, Ltd
The Sediments of Time
Summary
Meave Leakey’s thrilling, high-stakes memoir - written with her daughter Samira - encapsulates her distinguished life and career on the front lines of the hunt for our human origins, a quest made all the more notable by her stature as a woman in a highly competitive, male-dominated field. In The Sediments of Time, preeminent paleoanthropologist Meave Leakey brings us along on her remarkable journey to reveal the diversity of our early pre-human ancestors and how past climate change drove their evolution. She offers a fresh account of our past, as recent breakthroughs have allowed new analysis of her team’s fossil findings and vastly expanded our understanding of our ancestors. Meave’s own personal story is replete with drama, from thrilling discoveries on the shores of Lake Turkana to run-ins with armed herders and every manner of wildlife, to raising her children and supporting her renowned paleoanthropologist husband Richard Leakey’s ambitions amidst social and political strife in Kenya. When Richard needs a kidney, Meave provides him with hers, and when he asks her to assume the reins of their field expeditions after he loses both legs in a plane crash, the result of likely sabotage, Meave steps in. The Sediments of Time is the summation of a lifetime of Meave Leakey’s efforts; it is a compelling picture of our human origins and climate change, as well as a high-stakes story of ambition, struggle, and hope. "A fascinating glimpse into our origins. Meave Leakey is a great storyteller, and she presents new information about the far off time when we emerged from our ape-like ancestors to start the long journey that has led to our becoming the dominant species on Earth. That story, woven into her own journey of research and discovery, gives us a book that is informative and captivating, one that you will not forget." (Jane Goodall, PhD, DBE, founder of the Jane Goodall Institute)
©2020 Meave Leakey and Samira Leakey (P)2020 Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company
Masters of the Planet
Summary
Fifty thousand years ago - merely a blip in evolutionary time - our Homo sapiens ancestors were competing for existence with several other human species, just as their precursors had done for millions of years. Yet something about our species distinguished it from the pack, and ultimately led to its survival while the rest became extinct. Just what was it that allowed Homo sapiens to become masters of the planet? Ian Tattersall, curator emeritus at the American Museum of Natural History, takes us deep into the fossil record to uncover what made humans so special. Surveying a vast field from initial bipedality to language and intelligence, Tattersall argues that Homo sapiens acquired a winning combination of traits that was not the result of long-term evolutionary refinement. Instead, the final result emerged quickly, shocking our world and changing it forever.
©2012 Ian Tattersall (P)2019 Tantor
Summary of Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind by Yuval Noah Harari
Summary
From where did the world appear? Is the creation story true? Why is Man the way he is? Were there men before you and me? Would there be other species after you and me? Religion and politics: What is their origin? And why do they rule our world so strongly? Oh well! You might be in for a shocker! If you were told today that you come from a lineage of animals, and probably have some apes and chimpanzees as long-lost cousins, what would you think? If you knew that the creation story was just make-believe invented to control your world, what would you say? What if you were told that your species would one day come to an end? All of these and many more are the topics explored in Sapiens. In the book Sapiens, Yuval Noah Harari discusses all you need to know about who you are and where you come from, and debunks the many myths that have lived with us until now. This book contains a comprehensive, well-detailed summary and key takeaways of the original book by Yuval Noah Harari. It summarizes the book in detail, to help people effectively understand and imbibe the original work by Noah. This book is not meant to replace the original book but to serve as a companion to it. Contained are: Executive summary of the original book Key points of each chapter and Brief chapter-by-chapter summaries Disclaimer: This is a summary and review of the book Sapiens and not the original book.
©2018 Book Addict (P)2019 Book Addict
Paleofantasy
Summary
An exposé of pseudoscientific myths about our evolutionary past and how we should live today. We evolved to eat berries rather than bagels, to live in mud huts rather than condos, to sprint barefoot rather than play football - or did we? Are our bodies and brains truly at odds with modern life? Although it may seem as though we have barely had time to shed our hunter-gatherer legacy, biologist Marlene Zuk reveals that the story is not so simple. Popular theories about how our ancestors lived - and why we should emulate them - are often based on speculation, not scientific evidence. Armed with a razor-sharp wit and brilliant, eye-opening research, Zuk takes us to the cutting edge of biology to show that evolution can work much faster than was previously realized, meaning that we are not biologically the same as our caveman ancestors. Contrary to what the glossy magazines would have us believe, we do not enjoy potato chips because they crunch just like the insects our forebears snacked on. And women don’t go into shoe-shopping frenzies because their prehistoric foremothers gathered resources for their clans. As Zuk compellingly argues, such beliefs incorrectly assume that we’re stuck - finished evolving - and have been for tens of thousands of years. She draws on fascinating evidence that examines everything from adults’ ability to drink milk to the texture of our ear wax to show that we’ve actually never stopped evolving. From debunking the caveman diet to unraveling gender stereotypes, Zuk delivers an engrossing analysis of widespread paleofantasies and the scientific evidence that undermines them, all the while broadening our understanding of our origins and what they can really tell us about our present and our future.
©2013 Marlene Zuk (P)2013 Audible, Inc.
Cocaine + Surfing
Summary
From the author of Welcome to Paradise, Now Go to Hell, a finalist for the PEN Center USA Award for Nonfiction It is likely not terribly surprising that surfers like to party. The 1960-'70s image, bolstered by Tom Wolfe and Big Wednesday, was one of mild outlaws. Tanned boys who refused to grow up, spending their days drinking beer and smoking joints on the beach in between mindless hours in the water. As the surf brands accidentally morphed into a multimillion- then multibillion-dollar industry beginning in the 1980s, however, the derelict portrait began to harm business. In order to achieve wild year-on-year growth that came to be expected, surf trunks, T-shirts and sunglasses had to be sold en masse through Midwestern mall stores. Moms in Des Moines did not want corn-fed junior to be a delinquent. And so the external surf image of the 1980s and '90s and into the present became Kelly Slater and Laird Hamilton. Health, vitality, bravery, clean living, positive, and pure, with heavy doses of puritanism. Internally, though, surfing had moved on from booze and weed to its heart's true home, its soul's twin flame. Cocaine's rise in American popular culture as the choice of rich, white elites was matched, then quadrupled, within surf culture. The parties got wilder, the nights stretched longer, the stories became more ridiculously unbelievable. And there has been no stopping, no dip in passion. The surfer and his lover are entwined in gorgeously dysfunctional embrace. A forbidden love like Romeo and his Juliet, and few, if any, outside the insular surf world knew or know about this particular rhapsody. A byzantine ethic keeps interlopers far away. Bad behavior is also kept very well hidden, even from insiders, but evidence of psychosis rears its head from time to time. Overdoses, bar fights, surf contests, and murders and cover-ups. Cocaine + Surfing peels the curtains back on a hopped up, sometimes sexy, sometimes deadly relationship and uses cocaine as the vehicle to expose and explain the utterly absurd surf industry to outsiders. It also explores where dreams go when they die.
©2018 Chas Smith (P)2018 Audible, Inc.
The Invention of Yesterday
Summary
From language to culture to cultural collision: the story of how humans invented history, from the Stone Age to the Virtual Age Traveling across millennia, weaving the experiences and world views of cultures both extinct and extant, The Invention of Yesterday shows that the engine of history is not so much heroic (battles won), geographic (farmers thrive), or anthropogenic (humans change the planet) as it is narrative. Many thousands of years ago, when we existed only as countless small autonomous bands of hunter-gatherers widely distributed through the wilderness, we began inventing stories - to organize for survival, to find purpose and meaning, to explain the unfathomable. Ultimately these became the basis for empires, civilizations, and cultures. And when various narratives began to collide and overlap, the encounters produced everything from confusion, chaos, and war to cultural efflorescence, religious awakenings, and intellectual breakthroughs. Through vivid stories studded with insights, Tamim Ansary illuminates the world-historical consequences of the unique human capacity to invent and communicate abstract ideas. In doing so, he also explains our ever-more-intertwined present: the narratives now shaping us, the reasons we still battle one another, and the future we may yet create.
©2019 Tamim Ansary (P)2019 PublicAffairs
Work
Summary
"This book is a tour de force." (Adam Grant, New York Times best-selling author of Give and Take) A revolutionary new history of humankind through the prism of work by leading anthropologist James Suzman. Work defines who we are. It determines our status and dictates how, where, and with whom we spend most of our time. It mediates our self-worth and molds our values. But are we hardwired to work as hard as we do? Did our Stone Age ancestors also live to work and work to live? And what might a world where work plays a far less important role look like? To answer these questions, James Suzman charts a grand history of "work" from the origins of life on Earth to our ever more automated present, challenging some of our deepest assumptions about who we are. Drawing insights from anthropology, archaeology, evolutionary biology, zoology, physics, and economics, he shows that while we have evolved to find joy meaning and purpose in work, for most of human history our ancestors worked far less and thought very differently about work than we do now. He demonstrates how our contemporary culture of work has its roots in the agricultural revolution 10,000 years ago. Our sense of what it is to be human was transformed by the transition from foraging to food production, and, later, our migration to cities. Since then, our relationships with one another and with our environments, and even our sense of the passage of time, have not been the same. Arguing that we are in the midst of a similarly transformative point in history, Suzman shows how automation might revolutionize our relationship with work and in doing so usher in a more sustainable and equitable future for our world and ourselves.
©2021 James Suzman (P)2021 Penguin Audio
Red
Summary
The mere mention of red hair conjures vivid images and provokes strong reactions. Popular stereotypes of redheaded women range from the fiery-tempered vixen and the penitent prostitute - Mary Magdalene is often portrayed in art as a redhead - to the fun-loving scatterbrain Lucille Ball. Red-haired men, meanwhile, are consistently associated with either the savage barbarian or the redheaded clown. But why? Red: A History of the Redhead is the first audiobook to chronicle red hair and redheadedness from prehistory to present day. As both intrepid cultural detective and compelling storyteller, Jacky Colliss Harvey weaves a fascinating history beginning with the moment the redheaded gene made its way out of Africa with the early human diaspora. She goes on to trace red hair in the ancient world; the intolerance manifested against it as an indicator of Jewishness across medieval Europe; red hair as the height of fashion in Renaissance England; the redheaded "stunner" in Pre-Raphaelite art and the paintings of the Impressionists; and into the modern age, from its symbolism and adoration in popular culture to "gingerism", perhaps the last unacknowledged from of discrimination. More than an audiobook for redheads, Red is both an exploration of red hair as "other" and a celebration of every aspect of its unique social and scientific heritage at a time when it has never before been so frequently in the news or played such a prominent role in our visual culture.
©2015 Jacky Colliss Harvey (P)2015 Hachette Audio
Life in a Medieval Village
Summary
Life in a Medieval Village, by respected historians Joseph and Frances Gies, paints a lively, convincing portrait of rural people at work and at play in the Middle Ages. Focusing on the village of Elton, in the English East Midlands, the Gieses detail the agricultural advances that made communal living possible, explain what domestic life was like for serf and lord alike, and describe the central role of the church in maintaining social harmony. Though the main focus is on Elton, c. 1300, the Gieses supply enlightening historical context on the origin, development, and decline of the European village, itself an invention of the Middle Ages. Meticulously researched, Life in a Medieval Village is a remarkable account that illustrates the captivating world of the Middle Ages and demonstrates what it was like to live during a fascinating - and often misunderstood - era.
©1990 Frances and Joseph Gies (P)2017 Tantor
Identified Flying Objects
Summary
Could “UFOs” and “aliens” simply be us, but from the future? This provocative new audiobook cautiously examines the premise that extraterrestrials may instead be our distant human descendants, using the anthropological tool of time travel to visit and study us in their own hominin evolutionary past. Dr. Michael P. Masters, a professor of biological anthropology specializing in human evolutionary anatomy, archaeology, and biomedicine, explores how the persistence of long-term biological and cultural trends in human evolution may ultimately result in us becoming the ones piloting these disc-shaped craft, which are likely the very devices that allow our future progeny to venture backward across the landscape of time. Moreover, these extratempestrials are ubiquitously described as bipedal, large-brained, hairless, human-like beings who communicate with us in our own languages and who possess technology advanced beyond, but clearly built upon, our own. These accounts, coupled with a thorough understanding of the past and modern human condition, point to the continuation of established biological and cultural trends here on Earth, long into the distant human future. PLEASE NOTE: When you purchase this title, the accompanying PDF will be available in your Audible Library along with the audio.
©2019 Dr. Michael P. Masters (P)2019 Dr. Michael P. Masters
African Origin of Civilization - The Myth or Reality
Summary
This classic presents historical, archaeological, and anthropological evidence to support the theory that ancient Egypt was a black civilization.
©2020 Anta Diop (P)2020 Anta Diop