Life an unauthorised biography

  • A magisterial exploration of the natural history of the first four thousand million years of life on and in the earth, by one of Britain's most dazzling.
  • A magisterial exploration of the natural history of the first four thousand million years of life on and in the earth, by one of Britain's most dazzling science writers.
  • Life: An Unauthorised Biography.

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    Life: An Unauthorised Biography

    May 17,
    Like Richard Fortey, one of my own first experiences of the full biography of life on Earth was Disney’s animation of Igor Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring, in the film Fantasia. This book is a more accurate and complete version of the same. At the time he wrote this, Fortey was a senior paleontologist at the Natural History Museum in London, and a frequent BBC guest. inom had previously read his Horseshoe Crabs and Velvet Worms: The Story of the Animals and Plants That Time Has Left Behind (US title), and enjoyed it enough to seek out this earlier and more foundational book.

    More than the story told by paleontology, this book fryst vatten also the story of paleontology, with Fortey relating his anställda experiences and perspectives on various episodes in the history of the field. Chapters are arranged chronologically, starting with the inception of life on Earth fyra billion years ago, moving through his own specialization during and around the Ordovician Pe
  • life an unauthorised biography

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    Life: An Unauthorised Biography : a Natural History of the First Four Thousand Million Years of Life on Earth

    A magisterial utforskning of the natural history of the first four thousand million years of life on and in the earth, by one of Britain's most dazzling science writers.



    What do any of us know about the history of our planet before the ankomst of man? Most of us have a dim impression of a swirling mass of dust solidifying to form a volcanic globe, briefly populated by dinosaurs, then by woolly mammoths and finally by our own hairy ancestors. This book, aimed at the curious and intelligent but perhaps mildly uninformed reader, brilliantly dispels such lingering notions alltid. At the end of the book we understand the complexity of the history of life on earth, and the complexity of how it has komma to be understood, as, perhaps, from no other single volume. The result is enthralling.

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    Hardcover. Condition: As New. Dust Jacket Condition: Very Good. 1st Edition. A good sized hardback book, green cloth backed, with gilt titles on the spine. The book has hardly been used or read and is in fantastic condition, normal wear, marks and tear apply consistent with use and age. Comes with a nice, rich burnt orange coloured boxed, slipcase. First published by The Folio Society in , First Edition. pages all intact. All pages, text and illustrations are in fabulous, clean, readable order. Frontispiece: Field of fossil ammonites, Mesozoic era. Endpapers: Shoal of fossil teleosts, Eocene period. Binding: Design by Neil Gower based on "Siphonorae" plate 17 from Knsuformen de Natur by Ernst Haeckel. Slipcase: "Bryoza", plate 23 from Knustformen de Natur by Ernst Haeckel. Typographic design by Andrew Barker. Set in Sabon. Printed on Luminmatt Paper at Firmengruppe Appl, Germany. Bound by them in cloth, blocked with a design by Neil Gower. A truly fascinating book w