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A Brief History of Earth: Four Billion Years in Eight Chapters Hardcover – April 27, 2021
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Harvard’s acclaimed geologist “charts Earth’s history in accessible style” (AP)
“A sublime chronicle of our planet." –Booklist, STARRED review
How well do you know the ground beneath your feet?
Odds are, where you’re standing was once cooking under a roiling sea of lava, crushed by a towering sheet of ice, rocked by a nearby meteor strike, or perhaps choked by poison gases, drowned beneath ocean, perched atop a mountain range, or roamed by fearsome monsters. Probably most or even all of the above.
The story of our home planet and the organisms spread across its surface is far more spectacular than any Hollywood blockbuster, filled with enough plot twists to rival a bestselling thriller. But only recently have we begun to piece together the whole mystery into a coherent narrative. Drawing on his decades of field research and up-to-the-minute understanding of the latest science, renowned geologist Andrew H. Knoll delivers a rigorous yet accessible biography of Earth, charting our home planet's epic 4.6 billion-year story. Placing twenty first-century climate change in deep context, A Brief History of Earth is an indispensable look at where we’ve been and where we’re going.
Features original illustrations depicting Earth history and nearly 50 figures (maps, tables, photographs, graphs).
- Reading age1 year and up
- Print length272 pages
- LanguageEnglish
- Dimensions5.75 x 0.75 x 7.5 inches
- PublisherCustom House
- Publication dateApril 27, 2021
- ISBN-100062853910
- ISBN-13978-0062853912
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From the Publisher
Editorial Reviews
Review
“A fantastic distillation of Earth's history, from one of the world’s leading geologists: Andrew H. Knoll has written an engrossing, witty, and eminently readable romp through our home planet’s 4.5 billion years, from trilobites and dinosaurs to human origins and our rapidly changing modern times.” — Steve Brusatte, New York Times bestselling author of The Rise and Fall of the Dinosaurs
"Having spent decades at the forefront of discovery and research, Andrew H. Knoll has been one of our planet's leading scientists. In A Brief History of Earth, Knoll treats us to a 4.6-billion-year detective story revealing the origins and inner workings of our home in the solar system. In these pages you'll discover something profound: how our past, present, and future are grounded in Planet Earth." — Neil Shubin, author of Your Inner Fish and Some Assembly Required
"Covers the arc of our planet’s history from its earliest formation to the present day in a succinct and deftly-written way." — Forbes
“Charts the planet’s history in accessible style, from its beginning as ‘a small planet accreted out of rocky debris circling a modest young star’ through the development of minerals, geographical formations, atmosphere, and life forms large and small.” — Associated Press
"Skillfully condenses the history of the Earth. ... An expert primer on the history of everything." — Kirkus Reviews
"A sublime chronicle of our planet’s formation and beginnings, the perhaps unlikely yet awe-inspiring interactions that created life, diverse and abundant, and mass extinctions and recoveries. Knoll skillfully presents the extreme conditions, violence, and delicate fragility that mark the cycles and evolution of our home." — Booklist (starred review)
"The type of book that is sorely needed at this moment in history. ... Knoll assembles facts from a wide variety of fields to tell our planet’s story in a clear and accessible narrative." — Scientific Inquirer
“An eloquent call to action.” — CNN.com
"In spite of its sweeping scale, the Harvard geologist and natural history professor’s primer not only makes the titular four billion years understandable – his accessible expertise makes it interesting."
— Globe and Mail (Toronto)
About the Author
Andrew H. Knoll is the Fisher Professor of Natural History at Harvard University. His honors include the International Prize for Biology, the Charles Doolittle Walcott and the Mary Clark Thompson Medals of the National Academy of Sciences, the Paleontological Society Medal, and the Wollaston Medal of the Geological Society of London. For nearly two decades he served on the science team for NASA’s Mars Exploration Rover mission. Knoll is also the author of Life on a Young Planet, for which he received the Phi Beta Kappa Book Award in Science.
Product details
- Publisher : Custom House; First Edition (April 27, 2021)
- Language : English
- Hardcover : 272 pages
- ISBN-10 : 0062853910
- ISBN-13 : 978-0062853912
- Reading age : 1 year and up
- Item Weight : 11.6 ounces
- Dimensions : 5.75 x 0.75 x 7.5 inches
- Best Sellers Rank: #41,445 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #40 in Natural History (Books)
- #59 in Environmental Science (Books)
- #121 in History & Philosophy of Science (Books)
- Customer Reviews:
About the author
Andrew H. Knoll is the Fisher Professor of Natural History at Harvard University. His research focuses on the early evolution of life, Earth’s early environmental history, and the interconnections between the two. Knoll has also contributed to our understanding of mass extinction, the evolution of life on land, and biomineralization, and he served on the science team for NASA’s MER mission to Mars. Honors include the Walcott and Thompson medals of the US National Academy of Sciences, the Paleontological Society Medal, the Wollaston Medal of the Geological Society (London), the Sven Berggren Prize of Royal Physiographic Society, Sweden, and the International Prize for Biology. A member of the US National Academy of Sciences and foreign member of the Royal Society of London, Knoll received the Phi Beta Kappa Book Award in Science for Life on a Young Planet.
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The best chapter was the last one. The author does a great job of conveying the importance of taking action against global warming, tying the story back to the subject he covered in previous chapters. While doing that, he does not subject the deniers to shame or treat them condescendingly. I believe that's our best bet forward. If we try to shame the climate change deniers, all we will land up doing is having them put up a wall and deny what they see even more strongly.
Some might regard this as very basic, while others find it dense and overladen with facts. However, the author, an expert in this subject (with a long career at Harvard to his credit), does a remarkable job in presenting a complex series of topics. He does so with great brevity with only the minimum of detail needed to construct a coherent picture.
The organization of the book, "4 billion years in eight chapters," takes the the form of an elegant sequence of chapters entitled "Chemical Earth," "Physical Earth," "Biological Earth," "Oxygen Earth," "Animal Earth," "Green Earth," "Catastrophic Earth," and "Human Earth."
These develop the motivating theme, our existence on earth and the biosphere we depend on is in critical danger. Perhaps to many this message has become dull with repetition, but Andrew Knoll's treatment of it is fresh and convincing. As he quotes Baba Dioum in the Prologue, ""we will conserve only what we love, and we will love only what we understand."
"A Brief History of Earth" is a heroic effort by Dr. Knoll to promote a more complete understanding of the planet we live on.
I appreciate any scientific writer willing to write to the masses in a way that the rest of us can understand. He does a very good job of making this science interesting and understandable.
As a sci-fi movie buff, Journey to the Center of the Earth being a favorite, I’m not sure how the Jules Verne/H.G. Wells mistake got through the editing process.
I definitely recommend this book to anyone interested in the ground you stand on and how you got to stand upon it.
To me, all of the content in this book about CO2 and global warming directly conflicts with the content about the Permian extinction and the Triassic Jurassic boundary extinction. The author clearly and concisely lays out how massive volcanic activity destroyed %90 of life on this planet, by spewing noxious gasses including CO2 into the atmosphere, choking out existing life and raising the temperature of the planet as well. But here's the thing, the author also points out that this volcanic activity, lasted for millions of years at a constant rate. The Earth was a hellscape of lava and black clouds filling the atmosphere, for millions of years at a time.
Yes, Humans are destroying the planet in our own way by deforestation and especially pollution, I would never argue against that. But to blame a mere 130 years of burning coal and oil (and advancing the Human condition incredibly as a result) is going to lead the planet to extinction is patently ridiculous and directly contradicts the first half of the book.
If you're a deep climate change believer in this way, you will enjoy the entirety of the book and may rate it 4-5 stars instead of my 3, which I rate the first half a 5, with the second half a 2.
Top reviews from other countries
Reviewed in India on July 7, 2023