A (Very) Short History of Life On Earth

My favourite book of the year and maybe the decade … brilliantly funny and brilliantly informative … I shall read it again and again – Eric Idle, actor and comedianA scintillating, fast-paced waltz through four billion years of evolution, from one of our leading science writers … His poetic prose animates the history of life, from the first bacteria to trilobites to dinosaurs to us. – Steve Brusatte, University of Edinburgh paleontologist and Sunday Times bestselling author of The Rise and Fall of the DinosaursExhilaratingly 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 *This is now the best book available about the huge changes in our planet and its living creatures, over the billions of years of the Earth’s existence … Henry Gee makes this kaleidoscopically changing canvas of life understandable and exciting. Who will enjoy reading this book? Everybody! – Jared Diamond, author of Guns, Germs, and SteelHenry Gee’s whistle-stop account of the story of life (and death — lots of death) on Earth is both fun and informative. Even better, it goes beyond the natural human inclination to see ourselves as special and puts us in our proper place in the cosmic scheme of things – John GribbinDon’t miss this delightful, concise, sweeping masterpiece! Gee brilliantly condenses the entire, improbable, astonishing history of life on earth — all 5 billion years - into a charming, zippy and scientifically accurate yarn. – Daniel E. Lieberman, Professor of Biological Sciences, Harvard University‘Gee’s prose is so infectiously enthusiastic, and his tone so accessible, that you’ll find yourself racing through as if you were reading a novel - and you’ll never find yourself scrambling for a good fact to wheel out at an awkward pause in conversation again.’ * Reader’s Digest *Utterly brilliant and in my opinion the very best on the topic ever published – Jochen Brooks, Professor of Geobiology at The Australian National University

Dr. Henry Gee was born in 1962. He was educated at the universities of Leeds and Cambridge. For more than three decades he has been a writer and editor at the international science journal Nature. His previous books include The Accidental Species: Misunderstandings of Human Evolution; Across The Bridge: Understanding the Origin of the Vertebrates; Deep Time: Cladistics, the Revolution in Evolution; Jacob’s Ladder: The History of the Human Genome; The Science of Middle-Earth, and (with Luis V. Rey) A Field Guide to Dinosaurs. He lives in Cromer, Norfolk, with his family and numerous pets.