Overview

How did life begin? What really was ""snowball earth""? Why did the dinosaurs go extinct? Are we all descended from ""African Eve""? Will humans be responsible for the next major extinction? All these are addressed in this book. The story unfolds with the formation of the earth around 4000 million years ago, though it took until after massive bombardment by asteroids 100 million years later for life to emerge and another 15 million years until more complex life began to appear. Periods of relative calm were punctuated by five vigorous shake-ups representing major extinctions, with innumerable minor jolts along the way, then five million years ago, an able ape evolved that gradually came to dominate and control the other animals and plants. Evolution in all its complexity has been put aside and the future lies in the hands of single species.

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9780198525905

Table of Contents

Reviews

This remarkable book succeeds, within less than 300 pages, in summarizing everything essential about all living creatures for more than three billion years. If you are looking for one convenient, reliable, highly readable reference to replace your whole library, this is it. --Jared Diamond<br> Besides being a gripping yarn, The Story of Life is an impeccable review of the science. --Lynn Dicks, New Scientist<br> Extremely few living scientists would be able to cover the entire history of life authoritatively, with wisely chosen examples and principles, presented in lucid prose, and all in fewer than 260 well-illustrated pages. Richard Southwood is one of them, has done so, and I accordingly recommend this book to scientists and public alike. --E O Wilson<br>

<br> This remarkable book succeeds, within less than 300 pages, in summarizing everything essential about all living creatures for more than three billion years. If you are looking for one convenient, reliable, highly readable reference to replace your whole library, this is it. --Jared Diamond<br> Besides being a gripping yarn, The Story of Life is an impeccable review of the science. --Lynn Dicks, New Scientist<br> Extremely few living scientists would be able to cover the entire history of life authoritatively, with wisely chosen examples and principles, presented in lucid prose, and all in fewer than 260 well-illustrated pages. Richard Southwood is one of them, has done so, and I accordingly recommend this book to scientists and public alike. --E O Wilson<br>

Extremely few living scientists would be able to cover the entire history of life authoritatively, with wisely chosen examples and principles, presented in lucid prose, and all in fewer than 260 well-illustrated pages. Richard Southwood has done so. This remarkable book succeeds, within less than 300 pages, in summarizing everything essential about all living creatures for more than three billion years. If you are looking for one convenient, reliable, highly readable reference to replace your whole library, this is it. --Jared Diamond Besides being a gripping yarn, The Story of Life is an impeccable review of the science. --Lynn Dicks, New Scientist Extremely few living scientists would be able to cover the entire history of life authoritatively, with wisely chosen examples and principles, presented in lucid prose, and all in fewer than 260 well-illustrated pages. Richard Southwood is one of them, has done so, and I accordingly recommend this book to scientists and public alike. --E O Wilson This remarkable book succeeds, within less than 300 pages, in summarizing everything essential about all living creatures for more than three billion years. If you are looking for one convenient, reliable, highly readable reference to replace your whole library, this is it. --Jared Diamond Besides being a gripping yarn, The Story of Life is an impeccable review of the science. --Lynn Dicks, New Scientist Extremely few living scientists would be able to cover the entire history of life authoritatively, with wisely chosen examples and principles, presented in lucid prose, and all in fewer than 260 well-illustrated pages. Richard Southwood is one of them, has done so, and I accordingly recommend this book to scientists and public alike. --E O Wilson This remarkable book succeeds, within less than 300 pages, in summarizing everything essential about all living creatures for more than three billion years. If you are looking for one convenient, reliable, highly readable reference to replace your whole library, this is it. --Jared Diamond Besides being a gripping yarn, The Story of Life is an impeccable review of the science. --Lynn Dicks, New Scientist Extremely few living scientists would be able to cover the entire history of life authoritatively, with wisely chosen examples and principles, presented in lucid prose, and all in fewer than 260 well-illustrated pages. Richard Southwood is one of them, has done so, and I accordingly recommend this book to scientists and public alike. --E O Wilson This remarkable book succeeds, within less than 300 pages, in summarizing everything essential about all living creatures for more than three billion years. If you are looking for one convenient, reliable, highly readable reference to replace your whole library, this is it. --Jared Diamond Besides being a gripping yarn, The Story of Life is an impeccable review of the science. --Lynn Dicks, New Scientist Extremely few living scientists would be able to cover the entire history of life authoritatively, with wisely chosen examples and principles, presented in lucid prose, and all in fewer than 260 well-illustrated pages. Richard Southwood is one of them, has done so, and I accordingly recommend thisbook to scientists and public alike. --E O Wilson

Eminent scientist Professor Southwood has written a definitive text on the history of life from its beginnings in the chemical soup to the present day. One might expect such a book to be dense and unreadable, so broad is its sweep and so complex the issues involved, but one would be wrong. Although the book's material was originally directed at life sciences students, it is beautifully clear and so very readable that it deserves a place in every household. We all have a rough knowledge of evolution and perhaps think not a lot more can be said about it. Southwood's talent is to make this knowledge relevant to us, and to the seismic shifts in the environment we see around us today. Species have emerged, and disappeared, and we, too, are a species which may suffer the same fate. For dinosaur lovers, the book provides many fascinating revelations - for instance, dinosaurs were neither warm- nor cold-blooded, but a mixture of both, with biological systems unlike any other animal. In the context of a particular species and its impact on the environment, Southwood cites the effects of lead and chemicals upon our biology and the contribution humanity has made to increased carbon dioxide levels. The stress of population explosion coupled with the scarcity of natural resources leads to political instability. In the final chapter of the book Southwood asks whether we have the ability to deal with the monsters we have created - or whether they will be our doom and, as a result, sound the death knell for the human race as we know it. (Kirkus UK)

Author Information

Sir Richard Southwood FRS is former head of Imperial College and Oxford's Zoology Departments as well as ex-Vice-Chancellor of Oxford University. He is co-author of Ecological Methods, which is widely considered the ecologist's bible.

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