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Life A Natural History of the First Four Billion Years of Life on Earth Richard Fortey 9780375702617 Books

Download As PDF : Life A Natural History of the First Four Billion Years of Life on Earth Richard Fortey 9780375702617 Books

Life A Natural History of the First Four Billion Years of Life on Earth Richard Fortey 9780375702617 Books

About 80% digression, 20% (if that) actual writing on the history of life. I am a layperson, but I honestly could not tell you what, if anything, I learned about early life from this book. Fortey seems far more preoccupied with the trappings of being a scientist than he is with the science itself.

Buy this book if you want to know about the quality of the eggs served at Fortey's favorite bed and breakfast, "...the perfect bed and breakfast in a Tudor house with flag floors and improbable staircases. [The] breakfast was neither too much nor too little, the egg yolks were soft and the whites were cooked, the toast warm and cut into triangles on which to spread thick, home-made marmalade, and pots of tea arrived unbidden." (ACTUAL QUOTE from page 143 of Fortey hitting peak digression in a chapter on early terrestrial plant life.)

I can not understand how this book came to be known as such a touchstone on the topic.


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Life A Natural History of the First Four Billion Years of Life on Earth Richard Fortey 9780375702617 Books Reviews

It took forever to read
Fortey really makes you feel as if you're there in the distant geological past. the descriptions are so vivid and the prose is absolutely lovely. Get it, get it, get it, cant say enough good things about this book.really lovely stuff.
An excellent history of life on this planet told in a very personable way. I finished it and have started reading it again. The author presents a joy of discovery that is infectious - a pleasure to read. This is an excellent book as a starting off point into the fossil record and has excited me to learn more and dive deeper. 6 Stars - oh, they only allow 5? Oh well...
After reading a growing list of books on biology, geology, evolution and ecology if somebody asked me to recomend to good books to get an understanding and overview on the history of life on earth and geology I would recomend him `Life' and `Earth' both writen by Richard Fortey. Fortey is a very talented writer, he uses a similar approach as did Stephen Gould by presenting a complex topic in an accesible way starting with a very concrete example. Both books are easy and fun to read but when finished the reader realizes he managed to grasp quite a few important points. Both books were a good start to continue further reading on more specific topics within the areas of earth sciences, history of life and geology. I do strongly recomend this book
Like his more recent book Trilobyte, this book is well crafted. For the reader interested in the process of discovery by a scientist, I suspect that this book will satisfy. Sadly, I came to the book in a search for current information about the history of life on earth and was disappointed. The book drifts between stories of the author's paleontological expeditions and a discussion of theories of the history of life on earth. If the reader is actually attempting to learn what Fortey knows about that history he is left to riffle through the pages in search of information. There are some interesting discussions here, but unfortunately they are buried in chatty biography. In short, if you are interested in Richard Fortey's life, buy this book. If you are interested in life on this planet, keep looking.
This is a wonderful book and very well-written. Fortey's elegant prose style and his sense of humor make it a joy to read! However, it would have been a much better book if drawings had been included in the text to illustrate more of the organisms and concepts he introduces. Also, the bibliography is very skimpy.
British paleontologist Richard Fortey has written a marvelously concise and erudite historical synopsis of terrestrial life from around 4,000 million years ago, when meteors seeded the planet with the elements, most importantly carbon, that allowed for the evolution of organic molecules, to around 25,000 years ago, when Cro-Magnon Homo sapiens founded interior decorating by painting animals on the walls of his cave living-rooms. Fortey's account necessarily leaves off with the beginning of recorded history. (Blessedly, the life forms "Benifer" and Michael Jackson fail to appear in the narrative even once.)
The author hits the high points, including the evolution of single cells, the formation of bacterial colonies, the initiation of chlorophyll-based photosynthesis (that ultimately charged the atmosphere with oxygen), the specialization of cells into tissues, the population of the seas, the advance onto land, the greening of the earth, the separation of ancient Pangaea into today's separate continents, the Age of Dinosaurs, the advent of live-birth from wombs, the ascendancy of mammals, and finally the evolution of Man. For me, the most interesting chapter was on the apocalyptic cataclysm which ended the Age of Dinosaurs, i.e. the asteroid which apparently slammed into the Mexican Yucatan Peninsula creating the Chicxulub Crater. The volume also includes several photo sections that provide an adequate visual summary of the text.
The time spans of Fortey's tale are almost beyond mental grasp. For instance, at one point the author states that tool making by hominids began about 2.5 million years ago. Yet the style of the tools, the "technology" if you will, then remained virtually unchanged for the next million years. After witnessing the dizzying pace of technological advancement just during the span of my own life, this stagnation for such an incomprehensible length of time is mind-boggling.
I wish I had but a fraction of Fortey's knowledge of our world. LIFE should be required reading in every high school science program.
About 80% digression, 20% (if that) actual writing on the history of life. I am a layperson, but I honestly could not tell you what, if anything, I learned about early life from this book. Fortey seems far more preoccupied with the trappings of being a scientist than he is with the science itself.

Buy this book if you want to know about the quality of the eggs served at Fortey's favorite bed and breakfast, "...the perfect bed and breakfast in a Tudor house with flag floors and improbable staircases. [The] breakfast was neither too much nor too little, the egg yolks were soft and the whites were cooked, the toast warm and cut into triangles on which to spread thick, home-made marmalade, and pots of tea arrived unbidden." (ACTUAL QUOTE from page 143 of Fortey hitting peak digression in a chapter on early terrestrial plant life.)

I can not understand how this book came to be known as such a touchstone on the topic.