The Greatest Show on Earth
470 Seiten

Nachdem ich das englische Buch seit Monaten nicht weiter gelesen habe, habe ich nun doch mal das deutsche Hörbuch angefangen.

Ich muss nun nicht von der Evolution überzeugt werden und wollte nur mal einen groben Überblick bekommen. Dieses Buch liefert wesentlich mehr als das. Geht sehr ins Detail! Muss es mir auf jeden Fall nochmal wirklich durchlesen um mehr davon mit zu nehmen.

Alles sehr interessant und komplett verrückt.

Leider war die deutsche Übersetzung und oder der Erzähler etwas sehr hölzern und ziemlich schlecht produziert, aber dafür ziehe ich Dawkins keine Punkte ab.

The Greatest Show on Earth
470 Seiten

This is clearly a good book. Still, it wasn't for me personally.

The premise of the book is the huge amount of early-earth-creationists. The actual numbers of people believing in a world younger than 10,000 years baffles me (about 45% in the US, less in Europe, more in Islamic countries). In my surrounding though, I haven't met a single person who wouldn't believe in a million year history of evolution.

Dawkins really wants to drive the point home that evolution is a fact, so the books tends to get very repetitive in places. For some facts he gives three and more examples, stretching over several pages, where a simple "this is how it is, and here is a 2 sentence example" would have sufficed.

From the explictit overstating of examples and repetition of already mentioned facts I would have thought this to be targeted at ... less educated people? At the same time, Dawkins uses quite educated language. His sentences have this intellectual ring to them. It's as if you are hearing his British voice in your head.

The actual facts and pieces of evidence he presents are very interesting. Still, I am sure the same could have been done in a third of the book's volume.

This is a book offering ammunition to people who are surrounded by history deniers. Sadly - well, fortunately - that's not the case for me. So it was a quite a drag to read. Hopefully his other books are different, as I intend to read some more.