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 the elements in the stars to meditations on the future habitability of our world." -Science "A fascinating story." -Bill McKibben