The story of earth: the first 4.5 billion years, from stardust to living planet, paperback/robert m. hazen

Hailed by The New York Times for writing with wonderful clarity about science .

that effortlessly teaches as it zips along, nationally bestselling author Robert M.

Hazen offers a radical new approach to Earth history in this intertwined tale of the planets living and nonliving spheres.

With an astrobiologists imagination, a historians perspective, and a naturalists eye, Hazen calls upon twenty-first-century discoveries that have revolutionized geology and enabled scientists to envision Earths many iterations in vivid detail--from the mile-high lava tides of its infancy to the early organisms responsible for more than two-thirds of the mineral varieties beneath our feet.

Lucid, controversial, and on the cutting edge of its field, The Story of Earth is popular science of the highest order.

A sweeping rip-roaring yarn of immense scope, from the birth of the elements in the stars to meditations on the future habitability of our world.

- Science A fascinating story.

-Bill McKibben.