Life Book

Great book but as much as I enjoyed it I'd recommend one of his more recent books instead. Fortey is one of those rare science writers that combines a gift for explanation with the rare feat of being a great writer and often invokes a Saganesque beauty of science. His description of tetrapods wandering across Pangaea as 'perfectly pandemic perambulation' and his constant inclusion of numberless quotes of fine literature and poetry sucks the reader in (in a way another British science author, who shall not be named, has always failed miserly at.)

The religious language used in chapter two and in the conclusion as a means to show how an acceptance of science need not contradict ones beliefs was, I admit, a bit distasteful for a godless heathen like myself, but it's all for a good cause, is brief and is done is a way tasteful enough to make me consider giving this book to my science-hostile friends in hopes that Fortey can win them over.

The thing I like best is Fortey's rather valiant attempt to give each period of geologic time the attention it deserves rather than concentrating on what is only most interesting to us humans and focusing on that disproportionately. Sure, most science books I've read mention how single-cell life makes up most of our biologic history and how very long the process of oxygenation of the atmosphere really took but it's always a fleeting mention whereas Fortey really makes you feel and appreciate the long passage of time these things entail. Fortey has a gift for really fleshing out the history of life on Earth and really making one appreciate the immense scale of geologic time in a way most pop science books do not.