Author:
Narrator: Jane Goodall
Format: Abridged-CD
Publisher: Time Warner Audiobooks
Published: Nov 2005
Genre: Biography & Autobiography - General
Retail Price: $24.98
Discs: 5
The distinguished scientist draws on her experiences and spiritual beliefs to explore the higher purpose to life, explaining how this can be best served by demonstrating a deep respect for life in all its forms and a commitment to understand the spiritual ties between humankind and the natural world. Read by Jane Goodall. Book available.
I got almost to the end of this book and the last disc was badly scratched so I didn't hear the end, but I am not sure I could have taken much more. The beginning is very interesting, telling how Jane Goodall kind of fell into her career. And much of her life story is fascinating. But she hits a point where it all goes downhill, and she keeps on that downward slide, hammering in points about how awful humans are with a few exceptions and cataloging, in gruesome detail, the things that are done to animals. I don't really find fault with educating people about abuse to animals, but then she launches into everything that's wrong with the world. How did this book get the title Reason for Hope? Maybe in the last half hour or so on that last CD she gets around to it, but I had to keep turning my CD player off just to shake off the mood of doom and despair. Certainly she has lived through a lot, and has seen some ugly sides of human beings and even chimps, for that matter but it was relentless, and that's hard to listen to hour after hour, especially given that she reads the whole book in a kind of melancholy tone. I still admire her, but the book was very difficult.