Nothing begins when you thought it did…

‘Intimate and thoughtful… Exciting… [A] sweeping evolutionary history.’ Science

The author of the bestselling Your Inner Fish gives us a brilliant, up-to-date account of the great transformations in the history of life on Earth.

This is a story full of surprises. If you think that feathers arose to help animals fly, or lungs to help them walk on land, you’d be in good company. You’d also be entirely wrong.

Neil Shubin delves deep into the mystery of life, the ongoing revolutions in our understanding of how we got here, and brings us closer to answering one of the great questions – was life on earth inevitable…or was it all an accident?

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‘Neil Shubin’s book is one that completely changed my understanding of evolution… The things I learned from this book stayed with me – I’m still dropping facts into conversation.’

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‘Neil Shubin shows himself to be a natural storyteller and a gifted scientific communicator.’

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'Neil Shubin provides an up-to-date and utterly engrossing account of the latest thinking on the great transformations in evolution… Frequently funny and always eloquent, Shubin’s power as a science communicator is to make you fall in love with evolutionary biology all over again.’

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‘Enjoyable…  Eloquent… This superb primer brings the intellectual excitement of the scientific endeavor to life in a way that both educates and entertains.’