Customer Reviews

The Book of Life: An Illustrated History of the Evolution of Life on Earth

5 star:		(7)
4 star:		(6)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

The story about how it all began and has become... Beutifully illustrated. To the point examples. Beautifully brought together! Easy to understand to people with not to much evolution knowledge. The only thing I missed were some geological aspects. Being so important in the beginning, I would like some more information about the lithosphere, its cycles, the physical and chemical (and later biological) erosion, and so on. But it is one of my favorites, I like it very much. It is what a good book should be: inventing, well made, good looking!

This easy to read, well illustrated book covers the evolution of life from the Cambrian to the emergence of humans. More than a hundred color illustrations give the reader a sense of the events taking place. At the time of this article Stephen Jay Gould is at Harvard in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Other collaborators include J. John Sepkoski, Jr. a paleobiologist specializing in evolutionary radiation, Michael Benton an expert on extinct amphibians and reptiles, Christine Janis an expert on the evolution of mammals, Peter Andrews an expert on primate evolution, and Christopher Stringer an expert on the origins of humans. Illustrators include: John Barber, Marianne Collins, Ely Kish, Akio Morishima, and Jean-Paul Tibbles.

This singular book gives a very nice popular overview of the state-of-the-art in paleontology, chronologically covering everything from the Archean to the evolution of man. It is a beautifully illustrated and well-written book, although the text is perhaps sometimes a bit too technical and dense for the paleontological novice.
And please don't buy some creationists' claims that this is science fiction. The contents of this book is based on material from thousands of scientific articles in peer-reviewed scientific journals such as "Nature" and "Science", representing the fruits of the hard labour of paleontologists from all over the world. And the fossil record, even if it is convincing in itself, is far from the only support for evolution. Independent evidence for evolution can also be found in biogeography, development, molecular analyses (gene DNA, junk DNA, mtDNA etc), anatomical analyses, and even field observations of new species evolving. This large amount of evidence is why evolution is considered an established and undisputable fact. Of course, if one rather than facts wants comic book fantasies such as humans coexisting with dinosaurs and evil scientists conspiring to hide the truth, then one should look for creationist books instead. Or comic books.

I was excited to read an up-to-date history of life on earth. This book contains chapters which examine the emergence and diversification of all the major animal forms from the Precambrian Era to the emergence of Homo sapiens. Each chapter is written by an expert in the field.

Unfortunately, I was very disappointed in the book, and have actually stopped reading it about two-thirds through. The book's style and approach wildly fluctuates not only from chapter to chapter, but even within chapters. There are some true gems in this book, from the description of the geological ages and the accompanying illustrations on pages 24-25, to the discussion of the function of the plates on the back of Stegasaurus on page 136.

Unfortunately, to get to these eminently readable gems you often must wade through pages of monotonous and technical descriptions of the fauna which characterize a period. It would be much more memorable and pedagogically sound to pick just one or two examples and give detailed descriptions of them.

Compounding the disappointment with the dry text, the pictures which accompany the text fail to give a sense of the actual evidence the paleontologist must grapple with. For instance, it is very disappointing that there are so few photographs of fossils. The book has many paintings and drawings of what animals might have looked like, but the descriptions of fossils are not accompanied by photographs of the actual fossils! In a science such as paleontology, where visualization is half the battle, this omission seems quite strange.

Also, technical anatomical descriptions, such as of the pelvic structure of dinosaurs on page 133, would be much easier to digest with some nice diagrams. Introductory undergraduate texts make better use of pictures than this supposed popularization!

Finally, there are a bit too many highly cluttered phylogenetic trees containing species which only the aficianado will appreciate. This only accentuates my final point: the book is written for a popular audience, to whom I cannot recommend it. I would instead recommend it to the aficianado who has lost touch with recent molecular and paleontological efforts at phylogeny reconstruction. The neophyte should look elsewhere.

Very good tourists guide to evolution and natural history as it is currently reconstructed. For me it makes a nice grown up supplement to the steady diet of kid's natural history books I read to my kids. No punches pulled -- definitely best for the college educated.

From the origin of life on Earth to its many incredible forms and huge setbacks (mass extinctions) up to the present day dominance of a very successful species of uber-ape, this book is fascinating reading. I did not find the subject matter difficult to understand and I am a relative novice, so I would recommend it to those who have not delved deeply into the topic before. Many concepts well known to the general public are given thorough treatment and add several layers of knowledge onto what the reader may be starting off with. For instance, the section dealing with the most famous mass extinction, the demise of the dinosaurs, is not only a thorough look at all the possible causes of the event itself, but also a critique of the theorizing that has resulted in the common belief that the cause was primarily extraterrestial. One comes away with not only a better understanding for the possible causes, but also a better appreciation of scientific research and debate that leads up to theories being proposed and eventually accepted or rejected. The illustrations are excellent for the most part, and include many very informative diagrams. One of my favorites is the one showing how some species of fish evolved legs from their fins, allowing purely aquatic animals to begin the move onto land. All in all, this book is essential reading to anyone interested in the topic, and I highly recommend it.

This is the best overall survey of evolution I have found. It takes a chronological approach and uses numerous graphs and illustrations. The graphs are excellent at making sense of the time spans for evolution and for the relationships between (all) living things.

The Book of Life, an illustrated history of the evolution of life on Earth, edited by Stephen Jay Gould is a great gift for any natural history fan.
Chapter after chapter about the evolution of fish, dinosaurs, mammals and mankind by such greats as Peter Andrews, Christine Jones and Michael Benton. How did fish develop and make it to land? Why did mammals do so well after the dinosaurs died? And the illustrations, alone, are worth the price of the book.
Of course most of the questions can't be answered but just exploring the issues and topics is fun. Thinking is good for you and this book plugs into many of my other natural history interests allowing me to have a foundation, a background, before diving into the more advanced books on the same subjects.
True, being first published in 1993 and updated in 2001, means that the information is slightly outdated. For example, we DO know what a dinosaur heart looks like and we DO have soft tissue from a T-Rex bone. Also, they seem to be linking Homo ergaster to Homo habilis while all the other books I have on human evolution seems to link H. ergaster to Homo erectus.
The book is good for any library, new or used, so go buy it.

You would have expected more time and detail to the ermergence of the nervous system and the Cambrian Explosion. A more up-to-date section on human evolution (no mention of Ardipithecus Ramidus) but on the whole the book is a good synthesis of the state of the knowledge in this field.

I think this is a great book. It has a lot of interesting material, but it's also very readable. I consider it an intermediate level book. It doesn't require any previous knowledge, but there is a lot of material and it sometimes comes quite fast. Some of the material is more complex than one usually finds in popular science books, but it is usually put is boxes separate from the main text.

The book opens up with some introductory material. It's pretty standard: geological time, continental drift, fossils and a high level view of the tree of life. The book is biased towards the evolution that lead to humans, but this bias is explained in the introduction.

The books starts at the beginning, explaining why carbon is essential to life as we know it, describing prokaryotes, describing eukaryotes and it looks at what we know about pre-Cambrian life. Then it moves on to the Cambrian explosion, fish, tetrapods, amphibians, reptiles, dinosaurs, mammals and humans. A lot of very interesting material is presented, a small sample would be: cyanobacteria and the increase in atmospheric oxygen levels, the evolution of legs from fins, biomechanics, mass extinctions and molecular clocks.

I think this book would appeal to a wide range of people. Obviously the amount of material available for a book like this is enormous. So the challenge of an author/editor is deciding what to include and what to leave out. I think this book had a very nice selection. Most of the material is accessible. There is more challenging material and although it adds a lot to the book, even most of this could be skipped without hindering comprehension of the remaining material. I also thought the illustrations were very good. The amount of material is impressive, as is the clarity (in general) of the writing.