The Story of Life

By Richard Southwood and R. Southwood

Book Overview

In this attractively illustrated volume, eminent biologist Sir Richard Southwood offers a remarkable survey of life in all its forms, ranging from the earliest single-celled bacteria, to the evolution and extinction of animals such as the dinosaurs, to the variety of life today.
The book follows the major geological periods--such as the Cambrian, Ordovician, Silurian, and Devonian--explaining how great planetary changes such as the movement of the continents, the rising and falling of sea level, and the periods of glaciation, affected the forms of life on Earth.
Beginning with the earliest and simplest forms of life, Southwood discusses such amazing creatures as bacteria that live around geysers and thermal vents and can survive in boiling water. He explains how the development of skeletons triggered the Cambrian Explosion, when animals such as trilobites,
sea scorpions, shellfish, cephalopods first spread around the earth. He also examines such landmarks of evolution as the appearance of eggs in shells and of insects in flight. We read about the great dinosaurs and the arrival of the mammals and the primates, and the great extinctions, including the
Permian (the largest in fossil history, wiping out 95% of animals) and the Cretaceous/Tertiary (K/T) extinction (the one that wiped out the dinosaurs). Southwood concludes by examining the impact of humanity on Earth, considering if we ourselves might not unleash the next major extinction.
Southwood's love for his subject, for the life he describes so vividly, shines through this carefully crafted story. Generously illustrated with line drawings showing the fauna and flora of the Earth, both past and present, The Story of Life will enthrall anyone interested in nature and natural
history.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0198607865
• ISBN13: 9780198607861
• Release Date: April 2004
• Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
• Length: 272 Pages
• Weight: 1.05 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.8" x 6.3" x 9.3"

Customer Reviews

compact, concise, wonderfully written

Let me say first that you're not going to get an exhaustive thousand-page scientific tome covering vast amounts of detail. The book aims at breadth rather than depth--it might serve as the text for Geology 101 or the like. You get lots of drawings of represenative sample of life from the earliest stages up to the present. Each chapter has a nice map showing the continents that existed. So the strength here is the flavor of life rather than the minute details. There are plenty of books about, say, the Cretaceous that are rife with detail. But the problem might be that you're losing track of the overall view of the development of life. The book also covers the catastrophes--the mass extinctions. There are tables that plot the number of species in the different eras, and explanations of what caused the declines. This is not a book that deals heavily with controversy, although controversies are discussed. So you'll see the Conway Morris view of the Burgess Shale, and the Jay Gould view as well. This is basically a very well-written introductory work, and it is one that will whet your appetite for more detailed books.

Wonderful overview of the history of life

I thoroughly enjoyed this book. It covers the history of life on Earth in surprising detail and includes very nice illustrations and diagrams that help clarify things. It is able to bring together the chemistry, biology, ecology, and geology in a single volume that was clear and fun to read. Not so technical that you need a degree in the field to understand it and yet not too simplistic so it does not bore those that do. A very good book.

A sweeping view

This is an impressive book for anyone considering studies in any of the earth sciences. A swift, panoramic view of life's history, it is well organised and presented. Southwood examines some ideas concerned with life's beginnings, then moves along evolution's path. He sets the environmental scenario, describing continent formation and movement. He then describes how plant and animal life reacted to these changes. There's a wealth of good detail, supplemented by fine illustrations tied directly to the text.Among this book's attributes is the division of chapters by geologic ages. Opening the chapter with a world map of the period sets the environment. He explains how the shifting land forms impacted weather through changes in reflected sunlight and modified oceanic currents. With the environment fluctuating from warm and moist to cool, dry conditions, rainfall changed, forcing life to modify to survive. Some changes were too abrupt to follow and large extinction events resulted. Nowhere, from our viewpoint, were these changes more noteworthy than in human evolution. His chapter on that most significant topic provides an excellent overview of what is known. He provides a fine diagram of the various "hominins" but adroitly skirts the contentious issue of lineages. With such a vast subject range and limited space, Southwood has achieved a minor triumph. Research and assessment make earth sciences a dynamic discipline, with breakthroughs in the various subfields emerging more rapidly than ever before. He presents the latest information available without disturbing the flow of narrative. If this book has a shortcoming, it might be the "Further Reading" section which can only be described as sparse. While such a list can never be complete, a dozen titles that should have found a place here come to mind. That doesn't limit the value of this work, however, as the books cited are excellent resources for further reading. [stephen a. haines - Ottawa, Canada]