Monday, March 21, 2016

A New History of Life by Ward & Kirschvink

This book's full title is A New History of Life, The Radical New Discoveries about the Origins and Evolution of Life on Earth by Peter Ward and Joe Kirschvink. If you are interested in how life got started on earth, this is a great book to read.

One thing I found interesting is that when Brian Harland first published his theories about snowball earth, he rejected that fact that the oceans could freeze because climate modelers assured him that the planet could never have escaped. Now we know that is not true.

There are some good reviews on Amazon near the bottom of the site as usual. A number said that they found the book hard to read, but I have an interest in this subject and did not have a difficult time reading this book. There is good, but quite short review of this book at Bloomsbury Publishing. I found the review by Jonathon Keats at New Scientist quite interesting. He is right. Most animals that have ever lived have gone extinct. I doubt we are so special that we could not go extinct also. The book review by James Sullivan at Nature World News is short and interesting.

Peter Ward talks at the University Book Store in Seattle about this new book. Peter Ward also did a TED talk on Mass Extinctions.

Also, an index of the books I have reviewed are on my website at Books. Follow me on Twitter.

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