A review by chan_fry
The Ancestor's Tale: A Pilgrimage to the Dawn of Evolution by Richard Dawkins, Yan Wong

5.0

Bottom line: I learned from this book, and that's the primary reason I read non-fiction. Additionally, I was fascinated, engaged, and in a few cases blown away. With apologies to Richard Dawkins (and Geoffrey Chaucer), I didn't much enjoy the format, but this is a minor complaint. It just felt forced and artificial the way Dawkins attempted to squeeze his story into the series of "tales" as an homage to The Canterbury Tales. Otherwise, the entire book was enjoyable.

Beginning at the present, renowned scientist Dawkins takes the reader on a reverse journey through time, tracing humanity's evolutionary past through a series of "rendezvous" with other animal species (and larger groups). For the most part ignoring extinct species, the tale looks for branching-off points (speciation events); for example, the most recent about 6 million years ago when we last shared an ancestor with chimpanzees. Each rendezvous is accompanied by a helpful graphic showing how far back the story has gone, which animal groups are "joining" us on our "pilgrimage", and which geological eras/epochs are involved.

The Selfish Gene remains my favorite Dawkins book, but this one is powerful in its own right.