Can anyone recommend a good book (hell, even an above-mediocre book) on the history of life on earth, from the first bit of RNA, through through today, focusing on important steps or stages along the way (multicellular, sex, various sensories, etc.)
Thanks.
Oh, and just to cut you off at the pass, to the first dim bulb who suggests the bible, let me give you a phhhhhtttt in advance.
To get a good grounding in evolutionary theory, you could start with Richard Dawkins’ River Out of Eden, which is brief, well-written, and aimed at the general reader. You could do worse than to follow that up with Richard Fortey’s Life : A Natural History of the First Four Billion Years of Life on Earth.
Note however that if you’re at all of a religious bent, Dawkins will probably piss you off. Not content with arguing (convincingly) for the sufficiency of evolutionary processes unaided by any supernatural force for the development of life as we know it, he also aruges against the notion of religious belief in any form. Excessively so, to my mind, since some form of religious belief is nearly universal in the human experience, and it may be that what’s important (and equally a product of evolutionary processes) is not the presence or absence of supernatural forces, but human belief in them and the social and behavioral results of that belief.
They are a little dated, but Isaac Asimov’s primers, Beginnings and Life and Energy are both well-written and accessible. How someone who was such a schmuck got such talent I will never know.
V. (A no-talent schmuck).
Life? Don’t talk to me about life.
(I’m sorry, but it had to be said!)