The Kingdom of Speech
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Narrated by:
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Robert Petkoff
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By:
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Tom Wolfe
About this listen
The maestro storyteller and reporter provocatively argues that what we think we know about speech and human evolution is wrong.
Tom Wolfe, whose legend began in journalism, takes us on an eye-opening journey that is sure to arouse widespread debate. The Kingdom of Speech is a captivating, paradigm-shifting argument that speech - not evolution - is responsible for humanity's complex societies and achievements.
From Alfred Russel Wallace, the Englishman who beat Darwin to the theory of natural selection but later renounced it, through the controversial work of modern-day anthropologist Daniel Everett, who defies the current wisdom that language is hardwired in humans, Wolfe examines the solemn, long-faced, laugh-out-loud zigzags of Darwinism, old and neo, and finds it irrelevant here in the Kingdom of Speech.
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- Narrated by: Benjamin Soames, Clare Corbett
- Length: 2 hrs and 25 mins
- Unabridged
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Nine remarkable men produced inventions that changed the world. The printing press, the telephone, powered flight, recording and others have made the modern world what it is. But who were the men who had these ideas and made reality of them? As David Angus shows, they were very different - quiet, boisterous, confident, withdrawn - but all had a moment of vision allied to single-minded determination to battle through numerous prototypes and produced something that really worked. This is a fascinating account for younger listeners.
By: David Angus
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The Story Paradox
- How Our Love of Storytelling Builds Societies and Tears Them Down
- By: Jonathan Gottschall
- Narrated by: Joshua Kane
- Length: 7 hrs and 2 mins
- Unabridged
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Humans are storytelling animals. Stories are what make our societies possible. Countless books celebrate their virtues. But Jonathan Gottschall, an expert on the science of stories, argues that there is a dark side to storytelling we can no longer ignore. Storytelling, the very tradition that built human civilization, may be the thing that destroys it.
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A bit of a mixed bag with some amazing discussion
- By Justin on 04-27-22
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The Geography of Genius
- A Search for the World's Most Creative Places from Ancient Athens to Silicon Valley
- By: Eric Weiner
- Narrated by: Eric Weiner
- Length: 14 hrs and 10 mins
- Unabridged
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In The Geography of Genius, acclaimed travel writer Weiner sets out to examine the connection between our surroundings and our most innovative ideas. He explores the history of places, like Vienna of 1900, Renaissance Florence, ancient Athens, Song Dynasty Hangzhou, and Silicon Valley, to show how certain urban settings are conducive to ingenuity.
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Very, very disappointing
- By Tamara Greer on 06-08-16
By: Eric Weiner
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The Secret History of Kindness
- Learning from How Dogs Learn
- By: Melissa Holbrook Pierson
- Narrated by: Ann Osmond
- Length: 10 hrs and 51 mins
- Unabridged
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An intimate, surprising look at man's best friend and what the leading philosophies of dog training teach us about ourselves. Years back, Melissa Holbrook Pierson brought home a border collie named Mercy, without a clue of how to get her to behave. Stunned after hiring a trainer whose immediate rapport with Mercy seemed magical, Pierson began delving into the techniques of positive reinforcement.
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Warning: praises ABA done to autistic people
- By Rosslyn on 03-09-16
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The Bonobo and the Atheist
- By: Frans de Waal
- Narrated by: Jonathan Davis
- Length: 9 hrs and 3 mins
- Unabridged
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In this lively and illuminating discussion of his landmark research, esteemed primatologist Frans de Waal argues that human morality is not imposed from above but instead comes from within. Moral behavior does not begin and end with religion but is in fact a product of evolution. For many years, de Waal has observed chimpanzees soothe distressed neighbors and bonobos share their food. Now he delivers fascinating fresh evidence for the seeds of ethical behavior in primate societies that further cements the case for the biological origins of human fairness.
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Great research on apes, bad research on humans
- By Christian Bonnell on 07-18-14
By: Frans de Waal
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The Upright Thinkers
- The Human Journey From Living in Trees to Understanding the Cosmos
- By: Leonard Mlodinow
- Narrated by: Leonard Mlodinow
- Length: 12 hrs and 29 mins
- Unabridged
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In this fascinating and illuminating work, Leonard Mlodinow guides us through the critical eras and events in the development of science, all of which, he demonstrates, were propelled forward by humankind's collective struggle to know. From the birth of reasoning and culture to the formation of the studies of physics, chemistry, biology, and modern-day quantum physics, we come to see that much of our progress can be attributed to simple questions - why? how? - bravely asked.
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10/10 Got What I Wanted.
- By Austin on 09-22-15
By: Leonard Mlodinow
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50 Popular Beliefs That People Think Are True
- By: Guy P. Harrison
- Narrated by: Erik Synnestvedt
- Length: 13 hrs and 51 mins
- Unabridged
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Maybe you know someone who swears by the reliability of psychics or who is in regular contact with angels. Or perhaps you're trying to find a nice way of dissuading someone from wasting money on a homeopathy cure. How do you find a gently persuasive way of steering people away from unfounded beliefs, bogus cures, conspiracy theories, and the like? Longtime skeptic Guy P. Harrison shows you how in this down-to-earth, entertaining exploration of commonly held extraordinary claims.
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Skepticism, so Dull & Condescending
- By Mr Conway on 03-11-13
By: Guy P. Harrison
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Metaphysical Animals
- How Four Women Brought Philosophy Back to Life
- By: Clare Mac Cumhaill, Rachae Wiseman
- Narrated by: Alex Dunmore
- Length: 12 hrs and 35 mins
- Unabridged
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The history of European philosophy is usually constructed from the work of men. In Metaphysical Animals, a pioneering group biography, Clare Mac Cumhaill and Rachael Wiseman offer a compelling alternative. In the mid-twentieth century Elizabeth Anscombe, Mary Midgley, Philippa Foot, and Iris Murdoch were philosophy students at Oxford when most male undergraduates and many tutors were conscripted away to fight in the Second World War. Together, these young women, all friends, developed a philosophy that could respond to the war’s darkest revelations.
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Book about nothing
- By Gerardo Naranjo Gonzalez on 06-14-22
By: Clare Mac Cumhaill, and others
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What listeners say about The Kingdom of Speech
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- TsundokuSensei
- 03-03-20
Rollicking takedown of Neo-Darwinism
This seems to me an unusual book: a book that aims (and succeeds) in showing that the neo-Darwinian "modern synthesis" (and all of its derivative modern incarnations) is a complete failure in explaining how humans developed speech.
Written in a style that pure Tom Wolfe and with hilariously on-point narration by Robert Petkoff, this is a short book that I found fascinating from beginning to end. I learned about Darwin conspiring with Charles Lyell to present his idea of natural selection before Alfred Russel Wallace; how Wallace later turned on the theory due to its lack of explanatory power, how Noam Chomsky lorded over the linguistics world for 5 decades and how his biggest theory of language has proven to be a house of cards. All in all, a fascinating read. Highly recommended for all those with an interest in science and/or language or for those who can't get enough Tom Wolfe!
FIVE STARS.
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- William Varner
- 03-14-17
A Book by an Atheist That Every Creationist Should Read
Darwin and Wallace; Chomsky and Everett. Two people you undoubtedly have heard of and two probably not. What these two pairs have in common and how they differ are the themes that the eloquent Tom Wolfe creatively explores in this small but powerful work. What does linguistics have to do with evolution? Much in every way say Darwin and Chomsky. "Be careful what you see" in Wallace and Everett.
You can either hate him or love him, but you should not ignore what the pugnacious Wolfe has to say about his past anti-hero Darwin and his current antagonist Chomsky.
If you ever wonder how intellectual elites rule our world, read this book. And if you want to see how contrary voices can be squashed by those elites, here are some sad examples.
I listened to this book and it was, I think, even more powerful than reading it, mainly because of Wolfe's sometimes biting prose. But read it even if you don't have Audiobooks.
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- M. Copeland
- 10-18-16
Fascinating
The narrator is amazing, made the subject that much more riveting. I have read a fair amount about Darwin, but never heard this angle. I had trouble pushing the pause button to get my stuff done! Well done.
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- Paul
- 09-29-16
Just Don't If You are Literate
What did you like best about The Kingdom of Speech? What did you like least?
It's Tom Wolfe--that answers both questions.
What did you like best about this story?
Wolfe's way with words.
How did the narrator detract from the book?
I have been a subscriber since Audible began and have never been moved to write a review. This is the worst job of pronunciation I have encountered. Please tell narrators to look up words they don't use every day. Even then, High School biology student know that Gregor Mendel's name is not pronounced like a discount store in Massapequa. As to the Latin and German, he just didn't try. I like the book but it is agony to hear.
Was The Kingdom of Speech worth the listening time?
Yes, if you can stand the narration.
Any additional comments?
Did I mention the narration.
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- et
- 05-06-24
The four hours flew by
Personal preference : listen to this audiobook before reading the myriad insightful reviews.
It's just that kinda book.
Afterwards, think it over, read the zany reviews here on audible... and enjoy the audiobook again.
P.S.
Disclosure:
I bought the audiobook.
And, (still) liked it just as much.
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- kerima gabbay
- 04-11-24
A short and excellent classic by Wolfe
Now I know what Chomsky and Darwin were up to. A great reappraisal (with meticulous investigation) of both.
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1 person found this helpful
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- Sarah R. Jacobs
- 01-25-18
Tom Wolfe continues to make me feel brilliant...
...and witty for the duration of any given book of his I'm reading or listening to.
His sense of the intimacy and ultimately understandably-competition-born crawls, leaps, and scurries of history's ideas and movements are convincing in that they render concrete the facts that he has quite thoroughly and with great veridical sensitivity unearthed from the landfills of information about past singular human beings.
One feels that one is there, watching a furtive and despairing Darwin sending Wallace's paper to established members of the Linnean Society, caught between the rock of his less-developed theory and the hard place of his desire to stick to the code of conduct of a gentleman.
This is a history of ideas of the sort that I love: The sort that is an initiation ceremony belonging to the mini Elusinian Mystery Cult of learning for intellectual improvement. One is guided through the narrative by the author, and, based upon the trustworthiness, convincingness, and the storyteller's spellcasting ability of the author, one is brought into a slightly different, slightly better-comprehended world than one inhabited before the final chapter displays for one the truths the author has gleaned from the ceremony/ordeal of writing the book.
For this reason, I love Tom Wolfe.
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- Thomas Gleisner
- 04-02-20
Good read
As always Tom Wolfe has great insights and an interesting look into a particular field. The ending sort of fizzles out. But it's not the destination, it's the journey
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- Wayne
- 09-01-16
Takedown of a pseudointellectual bully!
In a battle of octogenarians Tom Wolfe uses simple words to take down academic and major bully Noam Chomsky. Along the way he destroys the modern theory of how human language "evolved". That was fun! He also takes some effective shots at Charles Darwin who likely stole his theory of evolution from Alfred Russel Wallace.
The Kingdom of Speech examines the one thing, language/speech, that separates humans from all other animals. I love this little book!
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15 people found this helpful
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- Dain Quentin Gore
- 12-03-16
The Cosmogony of Language
Fantastic dramatized synopsis of the human search for meaning through the vehicle of speech as an artifact of the act of, "being human." Certainly an opinion creeps in as this is not an academic approach by any means, as anyone that has read Wolfe will know, but that spice is much needed for a topic that could be viewed as stuffy and distant to the uninstitutionalized (which is yet another point to be made in Wolfe's overarching theme).
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