Life: A Natural History of the First Four Billion Years of Life on Earth [Hardcover]

Richard Fortey (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 0375401199 | ISBN-13: 978-0375401190 | Publication Date: March 24, 1998 | Edition: 1

By one of Britain's most gifted scientists: a magnificently daring and compulsively readable account of life on Earth (from the "big bang" to the advent of man), based entirely on the most original of all sources--the evidence of fossils.
With excitement and driving intelligence, Richard Fortey guides us from the barren globe spinning in space, through the very earliest signs of life in the sulphurous hot springs and volcanic vents of the young planet, the appearance of cells, the slow creation of an atmosphere and the evolution of myriad forms of plants and animals that could then be sustained, including the magnificent era of the dinosaurs, and on to the last moment before the debut of Homo sapiens.
Ranging across multiple scientific disciplines, explicating in wonderfully clear and refreshing prose their findings and arguments--about the origins of life, the causes of species extinctions and the first appearance of man--Fortey weaves this history out of the most delicate traceries left in rock, stone and earth. He also explains how, on each aspect of nature and life, scientists have reached the understanding we have today, who made the key discoveries, who their opponents were and why certain ideas won.
Brimful of wit, fascinating personal experience and high scholarship, this book may well be our best introduction yet to the complex history of life on Earth.


A Book-of-the-Month Club Main Selection   With 32 pages of photographs

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com 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 beautifully 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

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.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 368 pages
• Publisher: Knopf; 1 edition (March 24, 1998)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0375401199
• ISBN-13: 978-0375401190
• Product Dimensions: 9.6 x 6.6 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.6 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (51 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #815,908 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Discover books, learn about writers, read author blogs, and more.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

33 of 33 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars It seems like only yesterday!, November 22, 1999

By 

karl b. (Fraser Valley, BC, Canada) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Life: A Natural History of the First Four Billion Years of Life on Earth (Hardcover)

A book which attempts to cover four billion years in less than four hundred pages is going to have to be a survey aimed at the general reader. If you like serious scientific tomes which discourage humour and a bit of artistic license in written presentations-- this is not for you. Fortney's book is an engaging and enjoyable read that gives insight into the development of life on earth and the scientific field of paleontology. His gifts for constructing an accessible and often charming narrative, quoting poets and bards, noting geniuses and quacks, is a great tribute to English educational system-- which here has developed a devoted scientific mind, obviously entranced by his subject matter, who can express himself with elegance, comprehension, wit and some self deprecation, a refreshing attribute for a scientist.

24 of 24 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A treasure trove for the curious, July 6, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: Life: A Natural History of the First Four Billion Years of Life on Earth (Hardcover)

It is refreshing to read a book like this: a scientific book for the layman, but one that does not take for granted that its readers are ignorant or stupid. This is not a book for scientists or specialists, but for ordinary people, scientifically literate but only to some degree, who are curious about about the origin and evolution of Life, who ever wondered how was Earth like in the first years of its history, and in later periods, when our planet was still an alien place. This book does just that, taking us to sweltering Carboniferous forests, to oceans teeming with life and deserted land, to landscapes inhabited by strange animals, the like of which exist no more. It explains us how, step by tiny step, life changed the face of the Earth. I was not bothered by the personal references or apparent digressions; all these served as examples to illustrate different points. I was indeed bothered however by the lack of charts. For example, an chart illustrating the different geological eras would have been useful: not all of us know by heart the exact order of the geological periods, and sometimes it is easy to get lost. I ended up copying such a chart from an encyclopedia and keeping the slip of paper inside the book, for reference. It would also have been interesting to have charts (like the cladistic charts of which there are some examples), illustrating how different species are related.

52 of 60 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Fortey fails to find the middle ground..., July 24, 2000

By 

Alan R. Holyoak - See all my reviews

This review is from: Life: A Natural History of the First Four Billion Years of Life on Earth (Hardcover)

The title of this book, "Life: A natural history of four billion years of life on Earth," was a great selling point for me. As an invertebrate zoologist I have an ongoing interest in learning more about where life came from, how it is interrelated, and how and when the diversity of life around us came into being. Of course, no one has definitive explanations for those kinds of topics, but I was looking forward to reading Fortey's views on the natural history of life.

As I began reading I soon became disillusioned with Fortey's approach. If he wanted to write his autobiography, wedged in here and there among his main topic, why in the world didn't he tip off the reader by having a better subtitle? I did press on and complete the book, and found it to have meaningful content and thought-provoking ideas, but after all was said and done I was left wanting.

Fortey deserves commendation for undertaking such a massive topic, in 322pp no less! As I read through his account in search of information that would provide me with a clue to the framework he uses to understand the natural history of life on earth, I felt like I hit speed bump after speed bump in the form of occasionally interesting, but often meaningless, diversions. I'm sorry, but I could really care less, for example, what a hotel traditionally frequented by paleontologists serves for breakfast, or Fortey's personal reflections on Australian ponds where "the jolly swagman rested his tuckerbag"!

Don't get me wrong, those are wonderful literary side steps in this largely scientific work, but for me they were only distractions rather than useful contributions to the work.

Fortey does do a great job in some areas...for example, he does a super job of tying together plate tectonics and continent formations, break-ups, and movements as they affect the history of life. He also does a grand job of telling the basics of what kinds of things one can learn about life and the state of the earth from the fossil and other geologic records. But even so, there is too little meat here for the scientist, and there is too little support in the form of graphs, illustrations, etc., to allow most non-professionals to keep up with what's happening. That point is evidenced by the fact that Fortey introduces many little-known, though important, animals by their scientific names, but provides no supporting illustrations to let the reader know or confirm what Fortey is talking about.

There are a few chapters that, in my opinion, Fortey got "right." Those are the chapters he said that he was loathe to write -- the chapters about dinosaurs. Fortey did a masterful job of describing this period of history, as well as the underlying major controversies and players behind those controversies. He did not accomplish those things in most of the other sections of the book.

To sum things up, Fortey did what a water color painter, Terry Madden, tells his students to do -- that is, to use the largest brush you can manage. Fortey used a large brush supported by limited detail work here and there -- not enough detail to make this book a must have for professionals, and too little on the explanation side to make this an essential book for the non-professional.

If you are looking for a great book that provides a synopsis on the natural history of life on earth, there are better offerings. If you are looking for autobiographical accounts of scientists or works where the author likes to sidestep and let you in on his daydreams and poetic reflections, this book may suffice for you.

It seems to me, though, that Fortey failed to identify his audience, as well as his ultimate goal in writing the book. There are good parts, and disappointments.

Failing to find the middle ground resulted in what was, for me, only about a 3-star experience.

Alan Holyoak, Dept of Biology, Manchester College, IN