The History of Life: A Very Short Introduction

Given the reviews for this book, I thought "The History of Life" would be an interesting read. It should be noted that I do realise that a short introduction by definition cannot contain much detail, however, this book fails in its "History of Life". Had this been about the evolution of the vertebrates I would have given it 3 stars, but its title suggests a much bigger story. Ignoring mistakes like typos (e.g. P, 28 3.5 million should be 3.5 billion), the most important areas appeared to be glossed over. A lot of the book is about vertebrates which in terms of Life is not as important as some assume. A major failing in this book is a total lack of references or further reading list. I have a few of these books and this is the only one I have without some form of further reading.The chapter on the origins of life is poorly done and does not explain sufficiently the various theories. I simply cringed when I read "predicted by Euan Nisbet and Norman Sleep's model for the origin of life". The section on multicellularity wasn't particularly instructive nor helpful. Many undergraduate courses in Biology will cover the various theories of the origin of multicellularity in a number of lectures indicating the complexity and controversial nature of this area.By the time I got to p.118 and read the section on the runaway greenhouse, my brain could take no more. I think if you are looking for a book on vertebrate palaeontology/evolution then this would be a reasonably simple introduction. But if you are interested in the origin and early development of life, go elsewhere.

The format of these books plus this author's writing make for a very easy read. However it is a little patchy in what it covers. The vertebrates mostly get plenty of space but groups such as insects and molluscs are relatively neglected. The author seems to have worked on research into the Permian mass extinction and he devotes 20 pages to this, even though the causes for it are still not known for sure. The cretaceous mass extinction (which killed off the dinosaurs) gets just one page despite the fact that much more is known about it's causes. And the birds seem to have been very short changed with just about half a page - a pity since there have been some interesting discoveries of feathered dinosaurs recently.As a short introduction it's reasonably good, but just a little inconsistent.

The author, Professor Michael Benton (Palaeontologist) does a good job in describing the history of life as currently understood in just 166 fairly short pages. It didn't take me very long at all to read the entire book and at the end I felt better informed about current knowledge. On less certain points he described the current debate among scientists and this made the book feel more exciting to read. Some of the diagrams were excellent - I particularly liked the diagram of the universal tree of life. At times I was a bit bewildered by the names of all the different creatures mentioned but I just kept going and it made sense. The history of life is a complicated story and Benton is a good story teller. I was not so convinced by his brief closing philosophical comments. However, this is a minor point in this very readable, concise, and informative introduction to the subject.

I've got 40 of these great little books now and they are an excellent way to fill in the gaps in your knowledge. This one is no exception and describes what went before us and how we arrived. We really are insignificant creatures in the great scheme of things!

I am more of a science person and I do believe in evolution. But this book puts life in such perspective that it makes you wonder - Wow, this sounds almost impossible :) So interesting to read about where we all came from, how life started, how complex it is and how such complexity can ever come into being! A very good read :)