On the Origin of Species was built upon the young Charles Darwin's observations of the natural world when he circumnavigated the globe as a "gentleman naturalist" on the HMS Beagle. But work on his masterpiece did not begin until five years after his return when he moved into Down House with his family in Kent, England, where he would live for the rest of his life. For almost twenty years, the garden at Down House was both an inspiration and a laboratory to Darwin. In the orchard, he conducted experiments on pollination. He built a dovecote where he could breed new strains of pigeons that helped him understand the intricacies of generation. On his daily walk along the sandbank, he observed how plants competed for survival. In solitude, he also struggled with the ideas of evolution that had haunted him since his voyage. Bringing Darwin's garden to the present day, Boulter unfolds a shining portrait of the formation of one of England's greatest thinkers and his relationship with the place he loved, and shows how his experiments--conducted more than 150 years ago--are still revealing new proofs as we continue to search for the origins of life.

Sixty-five million years ago the dinosaurs were destroyed in a mass extinction that remains unexplained. Out of that devastation, new life developed and the world regained its equilibrium. Until now. Employing radically new perspectives on the science of life, scientists are beginning to uncover signs of a similar event on the horizon: the end of man.

In telling the story of the last sixty-five million years, Michael Boulter reveals extraordinary new insights that scientists are only now beginning to understand about the fossil record, the rise and fall of species, and the nature of life. According to Boulter, nature is a self-organizing system in which the whole is more important than its parts. The system is self-correcting, and one of its tools is extinction. If the system is disrupted, it will do what it must to restore balance.

This book is a thoroughly researched introduction to the new developments in the science of life and a chilling account of the effects that humans have had on the planet. The world will adapt and survive; humanity most probably will not.