Life: A Natural History of the First Four Billion Years of Life on Earth - Softcover

Fortey, Richard

Softcover

ISBN 10: 037570261X ISBN 13: 9780375702617

Publisher: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group, 1999

Synopsis

A New York Times Book Review Editors' Choice

"Extraordinary. . . . Anyone with the slightest interest in biology should read this book."--The New York Times Book Review

"A marvelous museum of the past four billion years on earth--capacious, jammed with treasures, full of learning and wide-eyed wonder."--The Boston Globe

From its origins on the still-forming planet to the recent emergence of Homo sapiens--one of the world's leading paleontologists offers an absorbing account of how and why life on earth developed as it did. Interlacing the tale of his own adventures in the field with vivid descriptions of creatures who emerged and disappeared in the long march of geologic time, Richard Fortey sheds light upon a fascinating array of evolutionary wonders, mysteries, and debates. Brimming with wit, literary style, and the joy of discovery, this is an indispensable book that will delight the general reader and the scientist alike.

"A drama bolder and more sweeping than Gone with the Wind . . . a pleasure to read."--Science

"A beautifully written and structured work . . . packed with lucid expositions of science."--Natural History

About this title

Review:

"The excitement of discovery cannot be bought, or faked, or learned from books," London Natural History Museum senior paleontologist Richard Fortey writes in Life. The first chapter, an engrossing account of an Arctic fossil-hunting expedition he undertook as a university student, will bring shivers to anyone who has ever ignored cold hands, hunger, and filthy socks to keep looking for something new, some piece of rock or bit of plant that may hold the key to the gleaming certainty of understanding. Fortey's descriptions of scruffy field assistants and eccentrically brilliant scientists are easily as interesting as the billions of years of evolution he so imaginatively describes. After all, the fossil record has not been accepted without controversy, and the arguments among fallible evolutionary biologists as they refined their theories make for great reading. But it is the little animals that make up our distant ancestry that are the focus here. The often mysterious fossils they left behind are like a history book in a language we don't know--the history of bugs and birds, humans and cauliflowers. One by one, Fortey reveals how the puzzles of paleontology have been subjected to the scientific method and to the politics and personal ambitions of academia, until a beautifully clear path is traced from the very first traces of life all the way across the eons to the advent of Homo sapiens. Fortey's elegantly written tour lets us share his passion for ancient seas and the animals that frolicked in them, and understand how time and chance contributed to the biography of us all. --Therese Littleton

From the Back Cover:

Praise from England for Richard Fortey's Life

"Life is a great joy to read . . . Fortey's narrative jumps from an obscure primeval mollusc to a piece of poetry, to an intellectual fashion; from an arid Australian desert to a quick walk in Charles Darwin's garden and then back to the strange histories that are written in rocks . . .
He writes powerfully and simply, and is, it seems, almost overwhelmed with a sense of beauty and intellectual excitement, and never-ending discovery."
--Minette Marrin, Literary Review

"Fortey leads us in a dance through time that is enthralling . . . I will turn to this book again and again for its richness of detail. Its breadth and readability are complemented by the cohesiveness of its narrative, a happy characteristic lacking in nearly all current scientific
writing . . . I strongly recommend you read this book."
--Lynn Margulis, Times Higher Education Supplement

"The tale of the evolution of animals and plants of all shapes and sizes, their invasion of land, continental drift, mass extinctions, and the rise of mammals, including humans . . . Fortey says that Darwin's view of the natural world informs his narrative as pervasively as grammar does a novel. His prose, like Darwin's, is spare, confident, and unadorned. As his impressive synthesis of evolution unfolds, a distant world is brought to life."
--The Economist

"This marvellous book works as a biography of all of us (and, as he points out, all cauliflowers too) by an opinionated biographer whose eye for detail and analogy across a huge range of reference uncovers all kinds of intelligible unity for the reader."
--Francis Spufford, Evening Standard

About this edition

• Publisher: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
• Publication date: 1999
• ISBN 10: 037570261X
• ISBN 13: 9780375702617
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 400