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The Tree of Life

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What to expect

'A DELIGHT' HENRY GEE
'BEAUTIFUL' THOMAS HALLIDAY

Where do we come from and how did we get here?

Come time-travelling through the history of every species that has ever lived with Professor Max Telford.

A four-billion-year journey through the evolution of our planet, The Tree of Life tells the fascinating story of the gigantic family tree that records the relationships between every living thing - from humans, fish and butterflies to oak trees, mushrooms and even bacteria.

Understanding how the amazing diversity of life on earth came to be is one of the greatest puzzles in biology. And this book, full of vivid and fascinating stories, takes you right inside: learn why grey wolves are more closely related to whales than to Tasmanian wolves; how geological change and environmental catastrophe left their marks on the genome; why we don't have tails but we are the only species with chins; and follow individual scientists down winding evolutionary byways and occasional dead ends in their attempts to solve this greatest of all puzzles. Along the way, we'll see how, far from being a dry representation of the dead, the tree of life is a living thing which constantly alters our perspective on the past, present and future of life on earth.

From Darwin's early sketches to the vast computer generated diagrams scientists are building today, The Tree of Life explains how we can know our family tree at all and tells the epic history of the various ways it's possible to be a living thing. This is our own very personal story that began with the tiny ancestor of all life billions of years ago and ends with you and me.

Critics Review

Combining cutting-edge genetics, a dollop of history and terrifically bizarre creatures, this endlessly entertaining and exciting account is essential reading.
Matthew Cobb
Telford is one of our generation's most brilliant biologists and The Tree of Life is a wonderful and vivid guide to evolution's marvels.
David George Haskell
If you've ever wondered how all of life is related, how we came to be, and how we know, then this brilliant and beautifully written book is for you. The greatest story ever told, presented with exemplary clarity and style.
Tim Blackburn
Rich with anecdote and infectious enthusiasm, The Tree of Life should delight anyone with even a passing interest in the miracle that is life on our planet.
Henry Gee
Beautiful... a breezy and very accessible way to get readers to think like scientists, and to see the tangled branches of our near and distant relatives all at once.
Thomas Halliday
A rollicking ride through the history of the natural world and the scientists who helped unravel it. Marvellous!
Seirian Sumner
A breezy, scholarly, whimsical, rigorous and companionable guide to our family history. Few would have the nerve or the knowhow to attempt [this], Telford has both. Shrewd . . . a big-picture look at the biggest of pictures... this book is many things: a collection of colourful Just So stories and a cabinet of curiosities. Fundamentally The Tree of Life is a travel book. It starts at the beginning of things and goes all the way to the end . . . an extraordinary adventurous book.
Times Literary Supplement
A great and straightforward guide to the tree of life: As zoologist Max Telford's book makes clear, it is a wondrous thing . . . The Tree of Life is a millennia-spanning science-history book in the spirit of Thomas Halliday's blockbusting Otherlands . . . [It] is a boon with a brilliant finale, in which he traces the 4 billion years or so from LUCA to Homo sapiens - and beyond.
New Scientist
Erudite, highly informed, and frequently amusing . . . compelling and memorable, even when discussing seemingly arcane details of worm anuses . . . A delight . . . Fantastic . . . I can heartily recommend the book to anyone interested in life on Earth, the scientific endeavor, and what it is to be human.
Science
In his enjoyable and ambitious The Tree of Life, Max Telford, an evolutionary biologist at University College London, takes us on an exhilarating cartographic journey in which he attempts to map out the various rivers and tributaries that make up the basic infrastructure of life's evolutionary history. . . Mr. Telford and his colleagues have devised systematic and often painstaking methods of tree-building that rationalize confounding factors.
Wall Street Journal
Author Max Telford
Narrator Max Telford
Duration 9 hours and 52 minutes
Release Date
ISBN 9781399806411
Format Audiobook
Publisher John Murray Press
Genre Evolution, The Earth: natural history: general interest, Zoology and animal sciences
Availability AU, GB, IE

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