'Exhilaratingly whizzes through billions of years . . . Gee is a
marvellously engaging writer, juggling humour, precision, polemic
and poetry to enrich his impossibly telescoped account . . .
[making] clear sense out of very complex narratives' - The Times
'Henry Gee makes the kaleidoscopically changing canvas of life
understandable and exciting. Who will enjoy reading this book? -
Everybody!' Jared Diamond, author of Guns, Germs, and Steel For
billions of years, Earth was an inhospitably alien place - covered
with churning seas, slowly crafting its landscape by way of
incessant volcanic eruptions, the atmosphere in a constant state of
chemical flux. And yet, despite facing literally every conceivable
setback that living organisms could encounter, life has been
extinguished and picked itself up to evolve again. Life has learned
and adapted and continued through the billions of years that
followed. It has weathered fire and ice. Slimes begat sponges, who
through billions of years of complex evolution and adaptation grew
a backbone, braved the unknown of pitiless shores, and sought an
existence beyond the sea. From that first foray to the spread of
early hominids who later became Homo sapiens, life has persisted,
undaunted. A (Very) Short History of Life is an enlightening story
of survival, of persistence, illuminating the delicate balance
within which life has always existed, and continues to exist today.
It is our planet like you've never seen it before. Life teems
through Henry Gee's lyrical prose - colossal supercontinents drift,
collide, and coalesce, fashioning the face of the planet as we know
it today. Creatures are engagingly personified, from 'gregarious'
bacteria populating the seas to duelling dinosaurs in the Triassic
period to magnificent mammals with the future in their (newly
evolved) grasp. Those long extinct, almost alien early life forms
are resurrected in evocative detail. Life's evolutionary steps -
from the development of a digestive system to the awe of creatures
taking to the skies in flight - are conveyed with an alluring,
up-close intimacy.
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