Dinosaurs at the Dinner Party
How an Eccentric Group of Victorians Discovered Prehistoric Creatures and Accidentally Upended the World
Table of Contents
About The Book
In the early 1800s the world was a safe and cozy place. But then a twelve-year-old farm boy in Massachusetts stumbled on a row of fossilized three-toed footprints the size of dinner plates—the first dinosaur tracks ever found. Soon, in England, Victorians unearthed enormous bones—bones that reached as high as a man’s head. No one had ever seen such things. Outside of myths and fairy tales, no one had even imagined that creatures like three-toed giants had once lumbered across the land. And if anyone had somehow conjured up such a scene, they would never have imagined that all those animals could have vanished, hundreds of millions years ago. The thought of sudden, arbitrary disappearance from life was unnerving and forced the Victorians to rethink everything they knew about the world.
Now, in Dinosaurs at the Dinner Party, celebrated storyteller and historian Edward Dolnick leads us through a compelling true adventure as the paleontologists of the first half of the 19th century puzzled their way through the fossil record to create the story of dinosaurs we know today. The tale begins with Mary Anning, a poor, uneducated woman who had a sixth sense for finding fossils buried deep inside cliffs; and moves to a brilliant, eccentric geologist named William Buckland, a kind of Doctor Doolittle on a mission to eat his way through the entire animal kingdom; and then on to Richard Owen, the most respected and the most despised scientist of his generation.
Entertaining, erudite, and featuring an unconventional cast of characters, Dinosaurs at the Dinner Party tells the story of how the accidental discovery of prehistoric creatures upended humanity’s understanding of the world and their place in it, and how a group of paleontologists worked to bring it back into focus again.
About The Reader
Product Details
- Publisher: Simon & Schuster Audio (August 6, 2024)
- Runtime: 8 hours and 51 minutes
- ISBN13: 9781797179247
Raves and Reviews
"Golden Voice narrator Cassandra Campbell handles this nonfiction audiobook about the discovery of dinosaur bones in the early 1800s as effectively as she does the contemporary novels of Judy Bloom and John Grisham. Her brisk, commanding, highly flexible voice maintains its hold on the listener’s ear even while traversing species names and fossil characteristics. A mismatched assortment of amateur geologists, baffled scientists, and determined Bible scholars provides Campbell with a rich narrative, often droll, always informative and insightful. The listener’s tool here is the benefit of hindsight. Today we know these were prehistoric creatures, not victims of the Great Flood, and that the world is millions of years old. But in the decades before Darwin that was unwelcome news."
– AudioFile Magazine
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High Resolution Images
- Book Cover Image (jpg): Dinosaurs at the Dinner Party Unabridged Audio Download 9781797179247
- Author Photo (jpg): Edward Dolnick © Lynn Golden(0.1 MB)
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