This is a story about you. It is the history of who you are and how you came to be. It is unique to you, as it is to each of the 100 billion modern humans who have ever drawn breath. But it is also our collective story, because in every one of our genomes we each carry the history of our species--births, deaths, disease, war, famine, migration, and a lot of sex. Since scientists first read the human genome in 2001, it has been subject to all sorts...

Earth’s natural history is full of fascinating instances of convergence: phenomena like eyes and wings and tree-climbing lizards that have evolved independently, multiple times. But evolutionary biologists also point out many examples of contingency, cases where the tiniest change — a random mutation or an ancient butterfly sneeze — caused evolution to take a completely different course. What role does each force really play in the constantly...

Introduction by Edward J. Larson
 
Perhaps the most readable and accessible of the great works of scientific inquiry, The Origin of Species sold out its first printing on the very day it was published in 1859. Theologians quickly labeled Charles Darwin the most dangerous man in England and, as the Saturday Review noted, the uproar over the book quickly “passed beyond the bounds of the study and lecture-room...

Brian Hare, dog researcher, evolutionary anthropologist, and founder of the Duke Canine Cognition Center, and Vanessa Woods offer revolutionary new insights into dog intelligence and the interior lives of our smartest pets. In the past decade, we have learned more about how dogs think than in the last century. Breakthroughs in cognitive science, pioneered by Brian Hare have proven dogs have a kind of genius for getting along with people that is unique...

"At once far flung and intimate, a fascinating look at how finding our way make us human. In this compelling narrative, O'Connor seeks out neuroscientists, anthropologists and master navigators to understand how navigation ultimately gave us our humanity. Biologists have been trying to solve the mystery of how organisms have the ability to migrate and orient with such precision--especially since our own adventurous ancestors spread across the world...

Over the past 180 years scientists have discovered evidence that at least twenty-seven species of humans evolved on planet Earth. What enabled us to survive when all the others were shown the evolutionary door? Chip Walter tells the intriguing tale of how against all odds and despite nature’s capricious ways we stand here today, the planet’s most dominant species. Drawing on a wide variety of scientific disciplines, he reveals how a rare evolutionary...

"Ramsay can feel his brain changing--and his body, too. He's becoming something other than himself. Maybe even something other than human. As he sets out to discover who did this to him, and why, his transformation threatens everything: his family, his job, even his freedom. Because the truth of what's happened to him is more disturbing than he could possibly imagine. His DNA has been rewritten with a genetic-engineering breakthrough beyond anything...

Many animals and plants eke out seemingly unremarkable lives. Passive, constrained, modest, threatened. Then, in a blink of evolutionary time, they flourish spectacularly. Once we start to look, these "sleeping beauties" crop up everywhere. But why? Looking at the book of life, from apex predators to keystone crops, and informed by his own cutting-edge experiments, renowned scientist Andreas Wagner demonstrates that innovations can come frequently...

In Dawkins' view, human beings are vehicles of evolution--gene carriers whose primary purpose is propagation of their own genes. In this new book, he explains evolution as a flowing river of genes, demonstrating how genes meet, compete, unite, and sometimes separate to form new species.

The "science-adventure story of the ... team who discovered the 'Ardi' skeleton, a human more than a million years older than the famous Lucy, and their 20-year quest to redefine our understanding of human evolution"--