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The Monk in the Garden
- Narrated by: Fleet Cooper
- Length: 9 hrs and 13 mins
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Publisher's summary
Most people know that Gregor Mendel, the Moravian monk who patiently grew his peas in a monastery garden, shaped our understanding of inheritance. But people might not know that Mendel's work was ignored in his own lifetime, even though it contained answers to the most pressing questions raised by Charles Darwin's revolutionary book, On Origrin of the Species, published only a few years earlier. Mendel's single chance of recognition failed utterly, and he died a lonely and disappointed man.
Thirty-five years later, his work was rescued from obscurity in a single season, the spring of 1900, when three scientists from three different countries nearly simultaneously dusted off Mendel's groundbreaking paper and finally recognized its profound significance. The perplexing silence that greeted Mendel's discovery and his ultimate canonization as the father of genetics make up a tale of intrigue, jealousy, and a healthy dose of bad timing.
Telling the story as it has never been told before, Robin Henig crafts a suspenseful, elegant, and richly detailed narrative that fully evokes Mendel's life and work and the fate of his ideas as they made their perilous way toward the light of day. The Monk in the Garden is a literary tour de force about a little-known chapter in the history of science, and it brings us back to the birth of genetics - a field that continues to challenge the way we think about life itself.
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Takedown of a pseudointellectual bully!
- By Wayne on 09-01-16
By: Tom Wolfe
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American Philosophy
- A Love Story
- By: John Kaag
- Narrated by: Josh Bloomberg
- Length: 8 hrs and 3 mins
- Unabridged
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In American Philosophy, John Kaag - a disillusioned philosopher at sea in his marriage and career - stumbles upon a treasure trove of rare books on an old estate in the hinterlands of New Hampshire that once belonged to the Harvard philosopher William Ernest Hocking. The library includes notes from Whitman, inscriptions from Frost, and first editions of Hobbes, Descartes, and Kant. As he begins to catalog and preserve these priceless books, Kaag rediscovers the very tenets of American philosophy.
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Awesome Book! But..
- By Kye Sonne on 04-02-17
By: John Kaag
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Descartes' Bones
- A Skeletal History of the Conflict between Faith and Reason
- By: Russell Shorto
- Narrated by: Paul Hecht
- Length: 9 hrs and 13 mins
- Unabridged
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On a brutal winter's day in 1650 in Stockholm, Frenchman Rene Descartes, the most influential and controversial thinker of his time, was buried after a cold and lonely deathfar from home. Sixteen years later, the pious French Ambassador Hugues de Terlon secretly unearthed Descartes' bones and transported them to France. Why would this devoutly Catholic official care so much about the remains of a philosopher who washounded from country after country on charges of atheism?
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Philosophy of Modernity
- By Roger on 06-17-09
By: Russell Shorto
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A Mind at Play
- How Claude Shannon Invented the Information Age
- By: Rob Goodman, Jimmy Soni
- Narrated by: Jonathan Yen
- Length: 11 hrs and 51 mins
- Unabridged
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Claude Shannon was a tinkerer, a playful wunderkind, a groundbreaking polymath, and a digital pioneer whose insights made the Information Age possible. He constructed fire-breathing trumpets and customized unicycles, outfoxed Vegas casinos, and built juggling robots, but he also wrote the seminal text of the Digital Revolution. That work allowed scientists to measure and manipulate information as objectively as any physical object. His work gave mathematicians and engineers the tools to bring that world to pass.
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I wanted more information about Information Theory
- By Bonny on 05-08-18
By: Rob Goodman, and others
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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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The Glass Universe
- How the Ladies of the Harvard Observatory Took the Measure of the Stars
- By: Dava Sobel
- Narrated by: Cassandra Campbell
- Length: 12 hrs and 43 mins
- Unabridged
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Number-one New York Times best-selling author Dava Sobel returns with the captivating, little-known true story of a group of women whose remarkable contributions to the burgeoning field of astronomy forever changed our understanding of the stars and our place in the universe.
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But the seeing, which was everything, was better
- By Cynthia on 01-07-17
By: Dava Sobel
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The Man Who Loved China
- By: Simon Winchester
- Narrated by: Simon Winchester
- Length: 9 hrs and 11 mins
- Unabridged
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No cloistered don, this tall, married Englishman was a freethinking intellectual, who practiced nudism and was devoted to a quirky brand of folk dancing. In 1937, while working as a biochemist at Cambridge University, he instantly fell in love with a visiting Chinese student, with whom he began a lifelong affair. He soon became fascinated with China, and his mistress swiftly persuaded the ever-enthusiastic Needham to travel to her home country, where he embarked on a series of extraordinary expeditions to the farthest frontiers of this ancient empire.
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turn your watch back 70 years
- By Andy on 05-22-08
By: Simon Winchester
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The Professor and the Madman
- By: Simon Winchester
- Narrated by: Simon Winchester
- Length: 7 hrs and 21 mins
- Unabridged
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Part history, part true-crime, and entirely entertaining, listen to the story of how the behemoth Oxford English Dictionary was made. You'll hang on every word as you discover that the dictionary's greatest contributor was also an insane murderer working from the confines of an asylum.
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Perfect example of a quality audible book.
- By Jerry on 07-07-03
By: Simon Winchester
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Emerson
- The Mind on Fire
- By: Robert D. Richardson
- Narrated by: Michael McConnohie
- Length: 26 hrs and 8 mins
- Unabridged
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Ralph Waldo Emerson is one of the most important figures in the history of American thought, religion, and literature. The vitality of his writings and the unsettling power of his example continue to influence us more than a hundred years after his death. Now Robert D. Richardson Jr. brings to life an Emerson very different from the old stereotype of the passionless Sage of Concord.
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Finally!
- By Douglas on 08-15-14
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The Age of Wonder
- How the Romantic Generation Discovered the Beauty and Terror of Science
- By: Richard Holmes
- Narrated by: Gildart Jackson
- Length: 21 hrs and 26 mins
- Unabridged
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When young Joseph Banks stepped onto a Tahitian beach in 1769, he hoped to discover Paradise. Inspired by the scientific ferment sweeping through Britain, the botanist had sailed with Captain Cook in search of new worlds. Other voyages of discovery—astronomical, chemical, poetical, philosophical—swiftly follow in Richard Holmes's thrilling evocation of the second scientific revolution.
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Misleading title
- By Diane on 08-04-11
By: Richard Holmes
What listeners say about The Monk in the Garden
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- Jean
- 02-05-17
Stimulating
The book is divided into two sections. The first is the biography of Gregor Mendel (1822-1884). Mendel spent thirty-five years conducting experiments primarily on peas. Mendel was a monk who in the last part of his life was the Abbott of the monastery where he spent his life. He is considered the father of the science of genetics. Henig reveals the strengths and weakness of Mendel in an interesting fashion.
The second part of the book focuses on the rediscovery of Mendel. The primary figure is William Bateson (1861-1926). Bateson was a professor of biology in England and was the first person to use the word genetics. In 1902 he read Mendel’s paper and realized its importance for Darwinism. Henig tells of Bateson’s work to bring Mendel’s work to prominence. Henig reviews Bateson’s research work and his use of women scientists as research assistants. The author goes into detail about the disagreement between Bateson and Thomas Hunt Morgan(1866-1945) who developed the chromosome theory which Bateson opposed.
The book is well written and researched. The story is easy to read with lots of details about the main scientist. I did notice a few historical errors, for example, Henig said Galileo refused to renounce his heliocentric belief before the Inquisition when, in fact, he did. The author states she traveled to the Monastery in Czech Republic that Mendel lived it and examined his garden and papers. Henig noted that most of Mendel’s papers were burned after his death.
The author states her interest in genetics is personal because her father died of Huntington’s disease.
Fleet Cooper does a good job narrating the book.
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6 people found this helpful
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- Jen Carpenter
- 07-13-22
Well done and mind opening
I loved this book. It was so informative and was loaded with information. What I loved most was how the author made the characters come alive. He gave unknown scientists (to me) personalities. This book took me back to a different time. I completely loved it.
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- Disher
- 02-01-19
Changes in science and scientists
The author is pretty up front about the lack of actual information available with respect to Mendel. The irony is that.. had Mendel not been meticulous about avoiding such leaps, his work would have remained unknown and or possibly would have made assertions that would have been disproven. Luckily for the author and unluckily for us, history is the interpretation of facts through the lens of the historian’s own research. It need not be proven because it’s largely anecdotal. In that light, I found this book to be everything I had hoped for and successfully had my own mind working, not just on Mendel, but on my own personal analysis of why this book had been written at all. Reading critically is as important with this book as it is with all its predecessors.. which I may have read and accepted without thinking about it. In that way, it adds to the body of literature that reflects our own time. We get 1) the life of Mendel and how his valuable work was ignored for decades, 2) the man who rediscovered and fought for Mendel’s rightful place in science (caveats included), and 3) we get a contemporary view of it all from a scientist’s perspective. This is what happens in the realm of untestable assertions, and yet, we hope that our current attitudes will lead to better science and better treatment of scientists (okay, people in general). History is an art. Nonfiction writing is an art. How to treat science and scientists is probably (probability is a science) still an art.. but we’re working on it.. hopefully.. one day we’ll have a better understanding of the best way to get at and use science. Okay.. maybe that’s beyond the scope of this book.. but like I said.. it got me thinking.
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2 people found this helpful