A well-written, enjoyable, and thoroughly researched summary of everything that brought humans to the present day.
A debut science book offers a history of life in the universe, particularly on Earth.
In the beginning of this comprehensive work, Brodie examines the creation of the universe. Subsequent chapters explore the fundamentals of physics and the development of the solar system, and then the author turns his attention to his home planet. After an overview of Darwinian and Lamarckian theories of evolution, the account moves through the development of life, from the first prokaryotes and eukaryotes to what it means to be human. The volume touches lightly on a multitude of subjects, educating readers without overwhelming them, while providing plenty of material for further study (a substantial glossary and encyclopedic list of citations make up much of the back matter). The book is both informational and highly engaging, in the tradition of Bill Bryson’s A Brief History of Nearly Everything, and works equally well for pleasure reading and as a substitute for a science textbook. Brodie is particularly adept at summarizing and synthesizing existing research, making the works of Stephen Jay Gould, E.O. Wilson, and Yuval Noah Harari integral components of his text. The narrative is well organized, with a logical flow from one chapter to the next, and manages to be challenging and engrossing while illuminating topics that are familiar territory, if not always as clearly presented. Brodie has a gift for pithy phrases (“We humans require hierarchy but yearn for our egalitarian heritage”) that render the text deceptively simple while making it a joy to read. In the Preface, he explains that the volume, which includes diagrams and photographs, is the product of more than seven years of research. The effort put into the detailed work is evident throughout, as is the inclusion of recent developments like CRISPR gene-editing technology. Readers who are interested in refreshing their knowledge of science fundamentals will find the volume a useful overview while those who join Brodie in asking the title question will have plenty of fodder for further discussion.
A well-written, enjoyable, and thoroughly researched summary of everything that brought humans to the present day.Pub Date: May 23, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-5320-4854-8
Page Count: 446
Publisher: iUniverse
Review Posted Online: Oct. 4, 2019
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Weisman quietly unfolds his sobering cautionary tale, allowing us to conclude what we may about the balancing act that...
Nicely textured account of what the Earth would look like if humans disappeared.
Disaster movies have depicted the State of Liberty poking out from the ground and empty cities overgrown with trees and vines, but what would really happen if, for one reason or another, every single one of us vanished from the planet? Building on a Discover magazine article, Weisman (Journalism/Univ. of Arizona; An Echo in My Blood, 1999, etc.) addresses the question. There are no shocks here—nature goes on. But it is unsettling to observe the processes. Drawing on interviews with architects, biologists, engineers, physicists, wildlife managers, archaeologists, extinction experts and many others willing to conjecture, Weisman shows how underground water would destroy city streets, lightning would set fires, moisture and animals would turn temperate-zone suburbs into forests in 500 years and 441 nuclear plants would overheat and burn or melt. “Watch, and maybe learn,” writes the author. Many of his lessons come from past developments, such as the sudden disappearance of the Maya 1,600 years ago and the evolution of animals and humans in Africa. Bridges will fall, subways near fault lines in New York and San Francisco will cave in, glaciers will wipe away much of the built world and scavengers will clean our human bones within a few months. Yet some things will persist after we’re gone: bronze sculptures, Mount Rushmore (about 7.2 millions years, given granite’s erosion rate of one inch every 10,000 years), particles of everything made of plastic, manmade underground malls in Montreal and Moscow. In Hawaii, lacking predators, cows and pigs will rule.
Weisman quietly unfolds his sobering cautionary tale, allowing us to conclude what we may about the balancing act that nature and humans need to maintain to survive.Pub Date: July 10, 2007
ISBN: 978-0-312-34729-1
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Dunne/St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2007
PERSPECTIVES
Ackerman writes with a light but assured touch, her prose rich in fact but economical in delivering it. Fans of birds in all...
Science writer Ackerman (Ah-Choo!: The Uncommon Life of Your Common Cold, 2010, etc.) looks at the new science surrounding avian intelligence.
The takeaway: calling someone a birdbrain is a compliment. And in any event, as Ackerman observes early on, “intelligence is a slippery concept, even in our own species, tricky to define and tricky to measure.” Is a bird that uses a rock to break open a clamshell the mental equivalent of a tool-using primate? Perhaps that’s the wrong question, for birds are so unlike humans that “it’s difficult for us to fully appreciate their mental capabilities,” given that they’re really just small, feathered dinosaurs who inhabit a wholly different world from our once-arboreal and now terrestrial one. Crows and other corvids have gotten all the good publicity related to bird intelligence in recent years, but Ackerman, who does allow that some birds are brighter than others, points favorably to the much-despised pigeon as an animal that “can remember hundreds of different objects for long periods of time, discriminate between different painting styles, and figure out where it’s going, even when displaced from familiar territory by hundreds of miles.” Not bad for a critter best known for bespattering statues in public parks. Ackerman travels far afield to places such as Barbados and New Caledonia to study such matters as memory, communication, and decision-making, the last largely based on visual cues—though, as she notes, birds also draw ably on other senses, including smell, which in turn opens up insight onto “a weird evolutionary paradox that scientists have puzzled over for more than a decade”—a matter of the geometry of, yes, the bird brain.
Ackerman writes with a light but assured touch, her prose rich in fact but economical in delivering it. Fans of birds in all their diversity will want to read this one.Pub Date: April 12, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-59420-521-7
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Penguin Press
Review Posted Online: Feb. 16, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2016
© Copyright 2025 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
