'Intimate and thoughtful... Exciting... [A] sweeping evolutionary history.' Science The author of the bestselling Your Inner Fish gives us a brilliant, up-to-date account of the great transformations in the history of life on Earth. This is a story full of surprises. If you think that feathers arose to help animals fly, or lungs to help them walk on land, you'd be in good company. You'd also be entirely wrong. Neil Shubin delves deep into the mystery of life, the ongoing revolutions in our understanding of how we got here, and brings us closer to answering one of the great questions - was life on earth inevitable...or was it all an accident?

Neil Shubin's Your Inner Fish is the unexpected story of how one creature's journey out of the water made the human body what it is today - and one man's voyage of discovery in search of our origins. Have you ever wondered why our bodies look and work and fail the way they do? One of the world's leading experts in evolutionary history, Neil Shubin reveals the secrets of our biology: why if we want to understand our limbs we should take a close look at Tiktaalik, the first fish capable of doing a push-up; why if we want to know why we hiccup, the answer is in the way fish breathe; and why it is that fish teeth are surprisingly similar to human breasts. 'This would be Darwin's book of the year' Sunday Telegraph 'An intelligent, exhilarating, and compelling scientific adventure story' Oliver Sacks, author of The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat 'Delightful ... his enthusiasm is infectious' Steven D. Levitt, author of Freakonomics 'Profoundly fascinating ... a magisterial work ... expressed so clearly and with such good humour' Financial Times 'Will make you think about your organs in ways you have never considered before' Sunday Times Neil Shubin is a palaeontologist in the great tradition of his mentors, Ernst Mayr and Stephen Jay Gould. He has discovered fossils around the world that have changed the way we think about many of the key transitions in evolution and has pioneered a new synthesis of expeditionary palaeontology, developmental genetics and genomics. He trained at Columbia, Harvard and Berkeley and is currently Chairman of the Department of Anatomy at the University of Chicago.

Details on a Major New Discovery included in a New Afterword
Why do we look the way we do? Neil Shubin, the paleontologist and professor of anatomy who co-discovered "Tiktaalik," the "fish with hands," tells the story of our bodies as you've never heard it before. By examining fossils and DNA, he shows us that our hands actually resemble fish fins, our heads are organized like long-extinct jawless fish, and major parts of our genomes look and function like those of worms and bacteria." "Your Inner Fish makes us look at ourselves and our world in an illuminating new light. This is science writing at its finest--enlightening, accessible and told with irresistible enthusiasm.

A "Kirkus Reviews" Best Nonfiction Book of the Year
In "The Universe Within, "Neil Shubin reveals the connection between the evolution of the cosmos and the evolution of the human body.
Just as the history of the earth is written in the rocks, so too is the universe's 14-billion-year history written in the human body. Starting at the smallest level, with our very molecular composition, Shubin explores the question of why we are the way we are, tracing the formation of the planets, the moon, and the globe of Earth through the development of the organs, cells, and genes that make up human life.

The Universe Within is a thrilling journey from today all the way back to the Big Bang, which shows the deep connections between the human body and the universe, from Neil Shubin, author of Your Inner Fish What links the birth of the moon to our body clocks? How did the creation of the Atlantic Ocean affect how we have children? What does the water inside us and on Earth have to do with the deepest stretches of space? Humanity's status in the cosmos can seem insignificant. Yet, as Neil Shubin shows, the one place where the universe, solar system and planet merge is inside your body. Exploring the smallest atomic structures and vastest reaches of space, Shubin uncovers a sublime truth: that in every one of us lies the most profound story of all - how we and our world came to be. Neil Shubin is a palaeontologist in the great tradition of his mentors, Ernst Mayr and Stephen Jay Gould. He has discovered fossils around the world that have changed the way we think about many of the key transitions in evolution and has pioneered a new synthesis of expeditionary palaeontology, developmental genetics and genomics. He trained at Columbia, Harvard and Berkeley and is currently a Professor in the Department of Organismal Biology and Anatomy at the University of Chicago. 'A new, fresh way of telling the story of life, the universe and everything ... hugely enjoyable' Tim Radford, Guardian 'Shubin is not only a distinguished scientist, but a wonderfully lucid and elegant writer; he is an irrepressibly enthusiastic teacher ... a science writer of the first rank' Oliver Sacks 'Glorious, uplifting ... It tracks the very atoms in our bodies back to the Big Bang, and shows how all the molecules that comprise us have roots in the formation of Earth ... What is special about the book is its sweep, its scope, its panorama' Wall Street Journal