Seeds of Hope

Wisdom and Wonder from the World of Plants

By: Jane Goodall, Gail Hudson - contributor

Narrated by: Edita Brychta, Rick Zieff, Jane Goodall

Length: 14 hrs

Publisher's summary

Renowned naturalist and best-selling author Jane Goodall examines the critical role that trees and plants play in our world.

In her wise and elegant new audiobook, Jane Goodall blends her experience in nature with her enthusiasm for botany to give listeners a deeper understanding of the world around us.

Long before her work with chimpanzees, Goodall's passion for the natural world sprouted in the backyard of her childhood home in England, where she climbed her beech tree and made elderberry wine with her grandmother. The garden her family began then, she continues to enjoy today.

Seeds of Hope takes us from England to Goodall's home-away-from-home in Africa, deep inside the Gombe forest, where she and the chimpanzees are enchanted by the fig and plum trees they encounter. She introduces us to botanists around the world, as well as places where hope for plants can be found, such as The Millennium Seed Bank, where one billion seeds are preserved. She shows us the secret world of plants with all their mysteries and potential for healing our bodies as well as planet Earth.

Looking at the world as an adventurer, scientist, and devotee of sustainable foods and gardening - and setting forth simple goals we can all take to protect the plants around us - Jane Goodall delivers an enlightening story of the wonders we can find in our own backyards.

PLEASE NOTE: When you purchase this title, the accompanying reference material will be available in your My Library section along with the audio.

©2013 Jane Goodall (P)2013 Hachette Audio

We should all strive to be more like Jane Goodall

Jane Goodall is an amazing person. She personifies the calm curiosity in which we should all approach the world. Her life choices and experience are inspiring, her story is touching and reading this book definitely planted a seed of hope in my soul.

Goodall makes a complex subject relatable.

Would you recommend this audiobook to a friend? If so, why?

Absolutely would recommend. I now have a much broader understanding of the world of plants and their importance to our environment. Goodall makes us understand in very clear and precise terms why protecting our plants is so important to our planet's well being.

What other book might you compare Seeds of Hope to and why?

I would compare this in quality and information to her other wonderful books. It provides an informative and cautionary tale not unlike Stephen Hawking's books. But on some level - more relatable.

Which character – as performed by Edita Brychta – was your favorite?

Jane Goodall, of course.

Was there a moment in the book that particularly moved you?

I was particularly moved by travesties perpetrated on the planet by the large chemical companies Dow and Monsanto. Miss Brychta expressed true outrage and heartfelt disdain, as written by Miss Goodall, for the misdeeds of these chemical giants and the consequences of their actions. The greed without remorse is startling.

Any additional comments?

I thought Miss Brychta's narration was excellent and made for easy and enjoyable listening. Miss Goodall continues to make very complex subject matters very accessible.

Excellent information, inspiring but also worrying

An amazing book, full of great information and both hopeful and scary news. Some of the descriptions of gardens and such are a bit long, but that's to expect with Jane Goodall's enthusiasm and love for the plants and animals of this world. Strongly recommended for anyone who cares about our planet--especially the plants.

Amazing Content Ruined By Ideological Junk Science

What could have made this a 4 or 5-star listening experience for you?

If she had dropped the her attempt to shunt her excellent writing on the plant kingdom into a bad attempt to justify a philosophical agenda under the veneer of her scientific credibility.

Were the concepts of this book easy to follow, or were they too technical?

Worse! Readers lacking an advanced skeptical toolkit and experience with these topics will be unable to disentangle Goodall's messy blend of real and junk science in the later chapters. Goodall, a primatologist, betrayed a vast ignorance of other fields of science, even going so far as to reprint long dead controversies as if they were never resolved. If this book sells well, it could set back this debate by a decade or more.

Have you listened to any of the narrators’s other performances before? How does this one compare?

Not as a narrator, I've seen talks by Goodall. Her voice is so soothing I feel like I'm criticizing my grandmother.

You didn’t love this book... but did it have any redeeming qualities?

Yeah, I love plants, and this book had lots of interesting insights into that world. I even intend on listening to it again.... I'm just going to skip the last third of the book. (and I'm totally going to make a box of "flower seed grenades")

Any additional comments?

I understand Goodall has a philosophy that sees the act of breeding/engineering new kinds of plants as a kind of violation of nature, and is intrinsically untrustworthy. I also understand this as a kind of moral intuition, one that she attempts to justify the best way she knows how, the authority of science. I can respect that in the same way I respect a man who only eats kosher. I can appreciate his moral intuition, even how he satisfies it, without agreeing with his justification (ie, pork being bad for you).