Life: An Unauthorised Biography: A Natural History of the First Four Thousand Million Years of Life on Earth
A magisterial exploration of the natural history of the first four thousand million years of life on and in the earth, by one of Britain’s most dazzling science writers. What do any of us know about the history of our planet before the arrival of man? Most of us have a dim impression of a...
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A magisterial exploration of the natural history of the first four thousand million years of life on and in the earth, by one of Britain’s most dazzling science writers.
What do any of us know about the history of our planet before the arrival of man? Most of us have a dim impression of a swirling mass of dust solidifying to form a volcanic globe, briefly populated by dinosaurs, then by woolly mammoths and finally by our own hairy ancestors. This book, aimed at the curious and intelligent but perhaps mildly uninformed reader, brilliantly dispels such lingering notions forever. At the end of the book we understand the complexity of the history of life on earth, and the complexity of how it has come to be understood, as, perhaps, from no other single volume. The result is enthralling.
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Format: paperback
ISBN:
9780006384205 (000638420X)
Publish date: 1998-01-29
Publisher: HarperCollins
Pages no: 416
Edition language: English
Four billion years of life on Earth in a single volume. Obviously a lot of things are going to get glossed over, but it was an interesting and informative read. I think I got a bit tired of reading it the way I was, one chapter at a time, so I started to find it dry and got more annoyed when scienti...
TITLE: Life: An Unauthorised Biography [A Natural History of the First 4 000 000 000 Years of Life on Earth] AUTHOR: Richard Fortey PUBLICATION DATE: 1998 FORMAT: Paperback ISBN-13: 978-0-00-638420-5 _________________________________ Professor Fortey takes t...