Book Review: A (Very) Short History of Life on Earth

A (Very) Short History of Life on Earth: 4.6 Billion Years in 12 Pithy Chapters 

by Dr. Henry Gee

‎St. Martin's Press 2021, 278 pp.

 This book is what an Englishman like Dr. Henry Gee would describe as “exactly what it says on the tin.”  It ss the most readable, yet authoritative, short history of the earth and its life going back over the last 4.6 billion years that I've ever some across. It is, as the cover says, pithy. You would expect an editor of NATURE to be technically accurate, and of course he is. His language here is only as formal as it needs to be. At times he is poetic, colloquial, humorous, and even silly. But it all works together very well in a book a middle schooler could read but which will fascinate an adult. 

Gee goes through, not only the development of the individual species or group or family, but the evolutionary inventions that made it possible for life to grow and flourish under even terrible conditions. For example, you will come to understand how the backbone was created. You will understand how the amniotic egg came into being and how revolutionary that was. You will learn the true thing that separated modern men, besides their brains, from their contemporaries, is that they could run. Gee goes through the major eras, extinction events, and continental drifts showing the drastic effects they had on plant and animal life. And he does it all in 200 pages of text plus an Epilogue. 

Did you know the mammals produced over 25 groups (his word) during the age of the dinosaurs, only four of which have survived? Did you know that human beings almost vanished 200,000 years ago—and easily could have? Did you know the dinosaurs were only one of several lineages fighting for the top spot on Earth in the Triassic era, and not the most impressive one by any means? You'll learn that there was an astonishing riot of fascinating and weird species during certain periods that stand out, like the early Triassic and most of the Age of Mammals? This book is your secret key to a one-shot one reading adventure exploring the basics of how life began, grew, evolved, and will eventually die. 

Its only fault is its lack of illustration, which I final very puzzling: it would be easy to add line drawings of the more important features and the animals which developed them. I had to stop and look up the appearance of some creatures.  

If I could, I would send a million of these out to schools all over America. Doctor Gee has made a wonderful contribution to popular knowledge of science. And it's fun.

Matt Bille is the author of four books and history and science and two novels. His latest, Of Books and Beasts: A Cryptozoologist's Library, skeptically but fairly reviews 400 books in cryptozoology, supporting sciences like mammalogy and evolution, and notable fiction. Visit his website at www.mattbillrauthor.com or say hello to MattWriter on Twitter.