The Story of CO2 Is the Story of Everything

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Brought to you by Penguin.

From the celebrated author of The Ends of the World, an epic biography of the molecule that made – and could now break – everything we know

All life is made from CO2 . It was there at earth’s birth, and throughout evolution. It has kept our planet habitable for hundreds of millions of years. It has given us all the splendours of the world we know today. And yet it also holds the potential for life's destruction.

In this gripping adventure through eras and places, award-winning science journalist Peter Brannen tells the story of the world’s most important molecule. We travel from the beginning of time all the way up to our present reality, witnessing the staggering journey that CO2 has undertaken.

As we watch its movements through the rocks, the air, the oceans and living beings over four billion years, we come to see more clearly what it means for us to be churning through ancient life – in the form of fossil fuels – as we power our industrial world. We are, Brannen shows, performing an unprecedented experiment on our planet. If we are to avoid its catastrophic consequences, we must all begin to deepen our understanding of this curious substance, which has given us everything from the very first life forms on earth to the business titans reshaping our planet today.

© Peter Brannen 2025 (P) Penguin Audio 2025

Critics Review

Urgent and astounding … Brannen weaves together the entire history of Earth, and the origins and tribulations of life over billions of years, with the predicament we find ourselves in today … Brannen is in a class of his own
Sunday Times bestselling author of The Rise and Fall of the Dinosaurs
As with everything Peter Brannen writes, this is fascinating; deep history brought vividly to life. But it's also crucial--our ability to understand and act on it will determine how the next period in earth's history unfolds
author Here Comes the Sun
A moving and magisterial tribute to the magic-seeming chemical interplay of air and rock, plant kingdom and ocean expanse, which scientists dryly call the ‘carbon cycle.’ Upon it, Brannen shows, absolutely all life rests—with growing, and unnerving, precarity
New York Times bestselling author of The Uninhabitable Earth
A completely new vision of Earth and human history that will change your perspective forever
author of Our Moon
What a brilliant and epic book this is! I study this stuff for a living and still learned so much—how coal nearly froze the planet, why the rocks beneath our feet allow us to breathe, and the origins of our modern industrial world
author of Human Nature
A grand tour of billions of years of history … Brannen elegantly moves through the Earth’s epochs
Daily Mail

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