Green Fire: The Life Force, from the Atom to the Mind

Green Fire doesn't just pose the question of why are we here; it dares to answer it: humans are the thinking incarnation of nature. Along the way, the authors, two of Europe's most celebrated and original thinkers, freewheel through history, touching on the work of Charles Darwin, Rudyard Kipling, Francis Bacon, and even Baron von Munchausen to link the origin of life on Earth with the development of the human brain. In these pages, readers learn how Aristotle and Galileo disagreed, how Queen Christina's clock flummoxed Descartes, and how a jellyfish and an airplane share the same navigational system; you'll even learn the meaning of words like "karst" and "cnidarian." But mostly, readers of Green Fire will enjoy a masterful book that combines scientific rigor with an entertaining narrative to explore the evolution of life on Earth and humankind's place in it.

Juan Luis Arsuaga is a professor of paleontology at the University of Madrid and a member of the (U.S.) National Academy of Sciences.
Ignacio Martínez is a professor of paleontology at the University of Alcalá.
Michael B. Miller lives in Burke, VA.