THE STORY OF LIFE: From the Big Bang to You

by Kim Marshall ‧ RELEASE DATE: Oct. 27, 1981

The Big Bang that ""destroyed every clue"" to what existed before; the birth of the stars; the chemical basis of life; ""the question [of] how amino acids and nucleotide bases sloshing around in thy primitive ocean got organized into bigger molecules and formed living cells""; the DNA code (at first a simple ""EAT, GROW, SPLIT, AND PASS THIS MESSAGE ALONG""); the whole course of evolution from those first cells to homo sapiens sapiens; the origin of races; what early hominids ate and whether they killed each other; the evolutionary interaction of food-sharing and monogamy, upright posture and tool-using, or the female pelvis and the evolution of culture; civilization from the invention of agriculture to electronic communication; and our dubious prospects for survival--which depends on solutions that must be found ""well within your lifetime"": Any attempt to deal with all of this in not much more than 100 pages of simply worded text would seem doomed to result in a dull list of dates and labels or a questionable series of generalizations. But Marshall--a sixth-grade teacher ""inspired,"" as he acknowledges, by a number of lint-rate science popularizers in print and on TV--has put together a remarkably fluent, interesting, and even exciting introduction to current knowledge and theories about the development of life. If Marshall's inner city classes don't yield up at least a few biologists, the prospects for civilization may well be bleak.

Pub Date: Oct. 27, 1981

ISBN: N/A

Page Count: -

Publisher: Holt, Rinehart & Winston

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 1981

Categories: NONFICTION