Life: A Natural History of the First Four Billion Years of Life on Earth |
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Life: A Natural History of the First Four Billion Years of Life on Earth
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by Richard Fortey
Sales Rank: 270958
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$4.00
At Amazon
on 6-20-2008.
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Features
Cover Type: Paperback with 400 pages
Published by: Vintage September 7, 1999
Written in: English
ISBN 10 Number: 037570261X
ISBN 13 Number: 978-0375702617
Book Dimensions:
7.9 x 5.2 x 0.8 inches
Weighs: 12.6 ounces
Product Review
"The excitement of discovery cannot be bought, or faked, or learned from books," London Natural History Museum senior paleontologist Richard Fortey writes in Life. The first chapter, an engrossing account of an Arctic fossil-hunting expedition he undertook as a university student, will bring shivers to anyone who has ever ignored cold hands, hunger, and filthy socks to keep looking for something new, some piece of rock or bit of plant that may hold the key to the gleaming certainty of understanding. Fortey's descriptions of scruffy field assistants and eccentrically brilliant scientists are easily as interesting as the billions of years of evolution he so imaginatively describes. After all, the fossil record has not been accepted without controversy, and the arguments among fallible evolutionary biologists as they refined their theories make for great reading. But it is the little animals that make up our distant ancestry that are the focus here. The often mysterious fossils they left behind are like a history book in a language we don't know--the history of bugs and birds, humans and cauliflowers. One by one, Fortey reveals how the puzzles of paleontology have been subjected to the scientific method and to the politics and personal ambitions of academia, until a gorgeously clear path is traced from the very first traces of life all the way across the eons to the advent of Homo sapiens. Fortey's elegantly written tour lets us share his passion for ancient seas and the animals that frolicked in them, and understand how time and chance contributed to the biography of us all. --Therese Littleton
--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
From Library Journal
The diversity of Earth's evolutionary history are preserved in its stones. Fortney enlivens this broad paleontological survey with anecdotes from his own fossil-hunting expeditions.
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.
--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
Reader Reviews
This kind of book gives popular science a bad name. I believe popular science should tell you something about science, albeit in an entertaining and accessible way. While the book is entertaining for the most part, I came away feeling as if I had not learned much at all. A much-cited criticism of the book is that the author digresses into many personal anecdotes. This is true. Many are entertaining, a few are even enlightening, but too many take up space in a book that is already too short to do justice to the topic. For example, Fortey spends two pages telling us what he thought of Thailand while he was doing fieldwork there. We discover that the food was hot enough to make his nose run, but that blowing your nose in public is taboo in Thailand. Such conflict! He hides scraps of rolled-up newspaper in his pants pocket to deal with this crisis. The climax of the story: a female lounge singer touches him on his thigh, is startled by a roll, and wonders what it might be. Being a scientist myself, reading this made me feel like I was cornered by an awkward colleague at a cocktail party and was desperately trying to avoid another self-indulgent anecdote. This is one example of many that you will have to wade through to get to some natural history. On a happier note, Fortey does a reasonable job conjuring up images of worlds long past. He can describe the tropical jungles of the dinosaurs or more exotic landscapes well enough to give you some idea of what it would feel like. Even here, however, he often throws in a lame simile: "...where now there beats a sun that melts ice as fast as a hot frying pan melts butter". Cringe. I did learn a few things, however. The section describing the geological evidence for a meteor that causes the extinction of the dinosaurs was a high point. If you don't already know something about what the Cambrian Explosion is (I did), you will learn that too. I suppose any book on the subject will inevitably have some sparse educational value. It is telling, however, that there is no chronological chart that lays out the many geological periods, eras, and so on that we encounter in this book. Also, many species, classes, and orders are mentioned without any definition about what sets them apart. A tree of relationships would have been nice. Evidently, Fortey is not much concerned that we learn or understand any of this. Overall, Fortey underestimates and disappoints his audience. The book feels like it is supposed to entertain fidgety teenagers with glitz rather than inform educated adults. [Reviewer's Background: I am an atmospheric scientist, but someone who has never taken a course in paleontology. This is the first book I have read on natural history.]
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Life: A Natural History of the First Four Billion Years of Life on Earth
Available from Amazon
Price: $4.00
Updated on 6-20-2008.
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