Life: A Natural History of the First Four Billion Years of Life on Earth | Richard Fortey

Life: A Natural History of the First Four Billion Years of Life on Earth | Richard Fortey | A Fine Introduction to Natural History

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Life: A Natural Hi...

	Life: A Natural History of the First Four Billion Years of Life on Earth Richard Fortey Vintage, 1999 - 400 pages average customer review:based on 46 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

A New York Times Book Review Editors' Choice

"Extraordinary. . . . Anyone with the slightest interest in biology should read this book."--The New York Times Book Review

"A marvelous museum of the past four billion years on earth--capacious, jammed with treasures, full of learning and wide-eyed wonder."--The Boston Globe

From its origins on the still-forming planet to the recent emergence of Homo sapiens--one of the world's leading paleontologists offers an absorbing account of how and why life on earth developed as it did. Interlacing the tale of his own adventures in the field with vivid descriptions of creatures who emerged and disappeared in the long march of geologic time, Richard Fortey sheds light upon a fascinating array of evolutionary wonders, mysteries, and debates. Brimming with wit, literary style, and the joy of discovery, this is an indispensable book that will delight the general reader and the scientist alike.

"A drama bolder and more sweeping than Gone with the Wind . . . a pleasure to read."--Science

"A beautifully written and structured work . . . packed with lucid expositions of science."--Natural History

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A scientist with a voice

Fortey is witty and engaging, enlivening his narrative with anecdotes and asides that remind readers that science is done, in the end, by human beings. (Note that the photos include a pub frequented by paleontologists as well as the more-expected photos of fossils and scientists.) A good companion to Richard Dawkins' "The Ancestor's Tale," which tells the same story in the opposite direction, i.e., from the present back to the beginnings of life on earth. Highly recommended for non-scientists, like me, who are fascinated by this topic and appreciate a little wit along with the facts.

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A Fine Introduction to Natural History

This book has just been reprinted (2008) in an illustrated edition by the prestigious Folio Society of Great Britain; so if you want to see what many early life forms actually looked like as you read Fortey's compelling prose, you should look for that version. Take note that since this book was first published several years ago, gently used hardcover editions may be a better bargain than the cheapest paperback! (This is hardly unique, either!)
A few sticklers and curmudgeons have given this great book two stars because there are a few anecdotes dispersed throughout the work, but even they admit that the other 95% of the book is a well written introduction to the emerging, ongoing saga of life on earth. This book is written in the manner of a lecture at a university, in which the professor engages and entertains the students, spicing the "meat" with some flavor to maintain their attention. It works exactly as intended. Even the misanthropes mentioned above admit that the anecdotes are often humorous, but they like to believe that people will read a science book made of nothing but soggy sawdust! Thanks anyway, I'll take it this way.

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Okay overview

It's okay, but Fortey's trying awfully hard with the writing, and there's a few more Milton quotes and stuff than I really need. And he spends like 100 page talking about trilobites, and many fewer pages talking about dinosaurs and giant rhinos. I dig giant rhinos, dammit! It has grown on me a bit since I finished it, but I wouldn't call it indispensable.

Good Book - Not Excellent

I was hoping for a book solely on paleontology. This book, however, also includes much autobiographical and other digressions. It is as if two books were stitched together. One containing autobiographical and other digressions on the study of paleontology and the other an overview of the natural history of the Earth. Perhaps it started out as one book and the publisher or author decided to add a different slant or perhaps this was the original intention, but not executed overly well.

Having said the foregoing, Life: A Natural History of the First Four Billion Years of Life on Earth, is still a good read and worth it. It is a good solid book. I would read it again. But if you are looking for an excellent introduction to paleontology or natural history, perhaps there are other books. If you are interested in some personal stories (and some of the personalities and controversies) involved in paleontology, this book is for you. It is a good book and well worth reading.

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A mixture -- memoirs and science

I have rather enjoyed the book, and am most of the way through it.

Criticisms in a number of the other reviews did not dissuade me from reading it, since I am not a scientist, just a layman with a lively curiosity.

I did enjoy the many aspects of the fossil record that Fortey develops, such as the rigors of seeking fossil materials in the inaccessible places on earth, the rivalry and politics of science, and even biographical tidbits explaining his own motivation to be come a paleontologist.

As for science, there's a lot of it, including numerous photographic plates showing fossils, many of them quite striking. The difficulty level is manageable by anyone with a few high school or college science survey courses.

Other reviewers were very unhappy with pages spent describing landscapes and cultures of the far-away places where Fortey did his primary research. In truth, these "interludes" tended to mitigate the difficult reading that usually accompanied his monologs on species variation and radiation.

Fortey by his own admission is a specialist in Precambrian and Cambrian Eras. To write a survey of life on the planet Earth, he therefore must pass forward into geographic strata well out of his primary expertise. Perhaps partly for that reason, I most enjoyed his survey of early life, including Archaean bacteria, Ediacaran life forms, and the Cambrian explosion of phyla as documented in the Burgess shale.

This book may not be satisfactory for persons highly knowledgeable about the geologic record who wanted more "straight science" and thus wrote adverse reviews, but it is very appropriate for someone like me -- a person interested in surveying the "big picture" of life on Earth from its beginnings to the present. A person who might be described as an interested layman.

This is a big book, and parts of it are challenging. However, I recommend it consistent with the cautions I've outlined here.

One problem NOT present is Mr. Fortey's lack of credentials as a scientist. He has an impeccable background. If a book like this were written by a "science popularizer" without the credentials, I would be skeptical. As it is, his writing style reminds me of Loren Eiseley, who mixed personal musing with science writing, and is very highly respected.

This book needs some time. It is thick and far from light reading. Try it when the winter winds blow and the snow is piled deep outside.

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