The Tangled Bank: An Introduction to Evolution [Hardcover]

Carl Zimmer (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: October 15, 2009 | ISBN-10: 0981519474 | ISBN-13: 978-0981519470 | Edition: 1st Edition

The Tangled Bank is the first textbook about evolution intended for the general reader. Zimmer, an award-winning science writer, takes readers on a fascinating journey into the latest discoveries about evolution. In the Canadian Arctic, paleontologists unearth fossils documenting the move of our ancestors from sea to land. In the outback of Australia, a zoologist tracks some of the world's deadliest snakes to decipher the 100-million-year evolution of venom molecules. In Africa, geneticists are gathering DNA to probe the origin of our species. In clear, non-technical language, Zimmer explains the central concepts essential for understanding new advances in evolution, including natural selection, genetic drift, and sexual selection. He demonstrates how vital evolution is to all branches of modern biology--from the fight against deadly antibiotic-resistant bacteria to the analysis of the human genome. Richly illustrated with over 300 illustrations and photographs, The Tangled Bank is essential reading for anyone who wants understand the history of life on Earth.

Editorial Reviews

Review

The Tangled Bank is the best written and best illustrated introduction to evolution of the Darwin centennial decade, and also the most conversant with ongoing research. It is excellent for students, the general public, and even other biologists. --Edward O. Wilson, University Professor, Emeritus, Harvard University

Carl Zimmer's excursion through the evolutionary epic is without equal. His gift for the scientific narrative is on full display through The Tangled Bank, and he leads his readers onward with an energy and delight that never disappoints. This marvelous text is an extraordinary introduction to the depth and richness of evolutionary science. --Kenneth R. Miller, Professor of Biology, Brown University, and author of Only a Theory: Evolution and the Battle for America's Soul

Zimmer has produced a wonderfully thorough introduction to evolutionary biology. With his prose and color diagrams by leading artists produced specially for this volume, The Tangled Bank will be a powerful tool to introduce students to the explanatory power of evolution and the way that it integrates different fields of knowledge. --Neil Shubin, Robert R. Bensley Professor of Organismal Biology and Anatomy at the University of Chicago, Provost of The Field Museum, and author of Your Inner Fish

About the Author

Carl Zimmer is one of the country's leading science writers. A regular contributor to the New York Times and magazines like Scientific American and Discover, he is the author of six books, including Evolution: The Triumph of an Idea and Microcosm: E. coli and the New Science of Life. He has won numerous awards from institutions including the National Academy of Sciences, the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and the American Institute of Biological Sciences.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 394 pages
• Publisher: Roberts and Company Publishers; 1st Edition edition (October 15, 2009)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0981519474
• ISBN-13: 978-0981519470
• Product Dimensions: 9.8 x 7.7 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2.8 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (10 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #135,507 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

I write books about science. Nature fascinates me, as does its history.

So far, I've written twelve books. My first book, At the Water's Edge (1999) followed scientists as they tackled two of the most intriguing evolutionary puzzles of all: how fish walked ashore, and how whales returned to the sea. It was followed in 2000 by Parasite Rex, in which I explore the bizarre world of nature's most successful life forms. In 2001 I published Evolution: The Triumph of An Idea, which was the companion volume to a PBS television series.

Soul Made Flesh, published in 2004, chronicled the dawn of neurology in the 1600s. The Sunday Telegraph calls it a "tour-de-force," and it was named a notable books of 2004 by the New York Times Book Review. In 2005, I published a short, richly illustrated introduction to the evolution our species, The Smithsonian Intimate Guide to Human Origins. Three years later I published Microcosm: E. coli and the New Science of Life. It is a biography of the best-studied creature on Earth. The Boston Globe called it "superb" and "quietly revolutionary."

To celebrate Darwin's 200th birthday in 2009, The Tangled Bank: An Introduction to Evolution. It is the first textbook about evolution intended for non-biology majors. The Quarterly Review of Biology called it "spectacularly successful."

In 2010 I branched out into e-books, publishing "Brain Cuttings: Fifteen Journeys Through the Mind." I followed up the next year with another collection, entitled (not surprisingly) "More Brain Cuttings: Further Journeys Through the Mind." In 2011 I also published two print books: A Planet of Viruses, and Science Ink: Tattoos of the Science Obsessed.

In addition to my books, I also write regularly about science for The New York Times, as well as for magazines including Time, Scientific American, National Geographic, Science, Newsweek, Natural History, and Discover, where I am a contributing editor. I've won awards for my work from the National Academies of Science and the American Association for the Advancement of Science. At Discover I write a monthly column about the brain and also write a blog called the Loom (blogs/discovermagazine.com/loom).

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

55 of 55 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A treasure for any library, December 22, 2009

By 

Michael Heath (North Woods of Michigan) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: The Tangled Bank: An Introduction to Evolution (Hardcover)

Tangled Bank distinguishes itself amongst a heady group of recent publications as a masterpiece of science writing, publishing, instruction, and as a reference book. It has immediately become one of the books in my library that I most treasure.

2009 was a great year for students and supporters of science, especially those that study evolution given it's the 150th anniversary of Charles Darwin's 1st edition of The Origin Of Species: 150th Anniversary Edition. The year was celebrated partly by several practicing scientists publishing excellent books about evolution directed towards the general reader, nearly all of which were complementary rather than redundant. Having read seven books covering evolution this year, and several that were published just prior to 2009, it's my position that Tangled Bank stands above the rest of the herd, in spite the others also being very worthy of consideration.

Not only is Tangled Bank a great book on evolution on your first read, but it is structured in a way that allows it be used as an extremely valuable reference source. At 9.75 inches tall by 5.5 inches wide, it's large enough to provide ample space on its pages which are filled with beautiful color illustrations, color photos, and other color graphics that greatly help reinforce the subject matter. The quality of the cover and the paper is also first rate so it should be able to sustain a long usable life.

While Tangled Bank is being described as a textbook, it's important to distinguish how Tangled Bank is different from the stereotypical textbook. Tangled Bank does not include quizzes, exercises, or tests; instead it can be identified as a textbook based on the structure of the subject material and framing, which is instructive rather than argumentative or a narrative like some of the other evolution books published recently. Each chapter of Tangled Bank ends with a "To Sum Up" page that presents a bullet point list to both help reinforce the objective of the chapter's instruction and help in future reference searches. While most textbooks of this quality can cost as much as $150, Amazon's current price of $40, or even the list price of $60 make this a true bargain given how many years I predict this book will be able to provide value, even as the rate of discoveries increases over time.

In addition Mr. Zimmer provides an excellent reference section categorized by both chapter and subject matter. Nearly all of Mr. Zimmer's references are either peer-reviewed articles generally accepted by the scientific community, or books popular with the scientific community that report on multiple peer-reviewed articles in a certain topical area germane to the chapter Zimmer covers. One reason Mr. Zimmer is an outstanding journalist is his intellectual honesty, where he is careful to report and distinguish between where science is confident in its explanations and where there is either controversy or a lack of confidence.

I would distinguish the closest competitor to what Mr. Zimmer does in Tangled Bank for the general reader to Richard Dawkins' The Greatest Show on Earth: The Evidence for Evolution (aka TGSOE) as follows. TGSOE is like a semester of seminars with a brilliant retired biologist with a wide command of the subject matter but also susceptible to frequent soliloquies that are often tangential, personal to the point it veers from what science understands or peer-accepts (where in the latter case Dawkins' is careful to note) and often illuminating but also sacrifices scientific findings for Dawkins personal reflections. Many of Dr. Dawkins' personal ruminations do serve to reinforce either the subject matter, scientific methodology, or are illuminative on how some research scientists think. However some of his reflections actually supplant what practicing scientists doing research are discovering with Dawkins' own non-fact based speculations, e.g., probability of life on other planets and how it could differ from life on earth.

Tangled Bank on the other hand is a more comprehensive self-guided tutorial of evolution. It's far more ambitious in terms of covering more topics within the relevant scientific disciplines and the format of instructional text coupled to far more graphics guarantees the reader will have a much better understanding of the theory of evolution than they would from books primarily focused on text alone (though Dawkins book does provide some nice color photos). I would argue that given Jerry Coyne's Why Evolution Is True provides a far more compelling and concise argument for the evidence of evolution than TGSOE; Tangled Bank makes TGSOE an unnecessary purchase.

While the Tangled Bank's subtitle states, "An Introduction to Evolution", it's my opinion that very few readers would not greatly benefit from owning and perusing this book even if their job is germane to some aspect of the life sciences and they've formally trained in the life sciences through the undergrad level or gone to med school. While it's true that Mr. Zimmer only introduces the topics he covers by chapter rather than drilling down into the 200-level or beyond on any of the topics, the theory of evolution covers a broad cross-section of scientific disciplines and Mr. Zimmer covers nearly all of them. So while someone whose studied developmental biology or cell biology might not learn much on those topics as they're covered here, I think they'd still benefit from Mr. Zimmer's excellent chapters covering radiations and extinctions, the evolution of behavior, or other topics tangential to their field of expertise or subjects studied years ago given Zimmer's ample reporting of recent findings. I've been studying evolution now for thirty-plus years and I either learned quite a bit about topics I'd previously covered, or was re-introduced to subjects with a plethora of additional findings since I last studied the topic.

This is truly a masterpiece of textbook publishing for the general reader.

36 of 37 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Evolution In Living Color, November 4, 2009

By 

Michael (Calhoun, Louisiana USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Tangled Bank: An Introduction to Evolution (Hardcover)

Truly a beautiful book...the numerous illustrations are colorful and bright, and they make you want to look closer and really learn and appreciate the details of evolution and life's history.

I've decided that Zimmer and Dawkins (Richard) are certainly my favorite evolution writers. But Zimmer's books tend to be [just a] little more appealing to me the way the material visually comes alive as compared to Dawkins' books.

I have my own little library of science, biology, and evolution books, and I could not image my collection being complete without this book now. It's a must-have.

24 of 26 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Decent textbook, but geared toward beginners, November 20, 2009

By 

Enjolras (Springfield, MA) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (TOP 1000 REVIEWER)   

This review is from: The Tangled Bank: An Introduction to Evolution (Hardcover)

As far as textbooks go, The Tangled Bank: An Introduction to Evolution is a pretty good one. Visually, it has a lot of great charts, pictures, and cladograms. It is a fun textbook in that sense. The text is well written and accessible to a wide audience, which was Carl Zimmer's goal. If you know absolutely nothing about evolution, I would definitely recommend this as a start.

However, The Tangled Bank really is an introduction. This same accessibility also makes the text a bit too basic for more advanced readers. If you've read, say, Nick Lane's Life Ascending: The Ten Great Inventions of Evolution or Why Evolution Is True, you might find The Tangled Bank: An Introduction to Evolution boring or repetitive. If you haven't, you've got a lot to look forward to with The Tangled Bank.