The Story of Earth: The First 4.5 Billion Years, from Stardust to Living Planet

Hailed by The New York Times for writing with wonderful clarity about science . . . that effortlessly teaches as it zips along, nationally bestselling author Robert M. Hazen offers a radical new approach to Earth history in this intertwined tale of the planets living and nonliving spheres. With an astrobiologists imagination, a historians perspective, and a naturalists eye, Hazen calls upon twenty-first-century discoveries that have revolutionized geology and enabled scientists to envision Earths many iterations in vivid detailfrom the mile-high lava tides of its infancy to the early organisms responsible for more than two-thirds of the mineral varieties beneath our feet. Lucid, controversial, and on the cutting edge of its field, The Story of Earth is popular science of the highest order.

A sweeping rip-roaring yarn of immense scope, from the birth of theelements in the stars to meditations on the future habitability of our world. -Science

A fascinating story. -Bill McKibben