WINNER OF THE ROYAL SOCIETY SCIENCE BOOK PRIZE 2022 '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 words - 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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