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'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
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