"The award-winning Caltech physicist and author of The Particle at the End of the Universe shares sweeping perspectives into how human purpose and meaning naturally fit into a scientific worldview,"--Amazon.com. "Sean Carroll is emerging as one of the greatest humanist thinkers of his generation as he brings his extraordinary intellect to bear not only on Higgs bosons and extra dimensions but now also on our deepest personal questions. Where are...

Describes the formation of planet Earth, from its beginnings as molten rock and poison gas, to the formation of oceans, to the evolution of life.

A biochemist, building on the pillars of evolutionary theory and drawing on cutting-edge research into the link between energy and genes, argues that the evolution of multicellular life was the result of a single event.

"The author of the best-selling Your Inner Fish, now gives us a lively and accessible account of the great transformations in the history of life, that enable us to further understand whether our presence on this planet is an accident or inevitable. The great transformations in the history of life brought about whole scale shifts in how animals live and how their bodies are organized: the evolution of fish to land-living creature, the origin of birds,...

"[This series] will explore the deepest mysteries of existence -- the questions that have puzzled mankind for eternity. This series brings together the brightest minds and best ideas from the very edges of science -- Astrophysics, Astrobiology, Quantum mechanics, String theory and more -- to reveal the extraordinary truth of our Universe."--Container.

Through the Wormhole explores the deepest mysteries of existence, the questions that have puzzled mankind for eternity. Who or what are we? Are we alone? How did life begin? What happened before? The series brings together the brightest minds and best ideas from the very edges of science to reveal the extraordinary truth of our universe.

"In the tradition of E.H. Gombrich, Stephen Hawking, and Alan Weisman-an entertaining and uniquely informed narration of Life's life story. In the beginning, Earth was an inhospitably alien place-in constant chemical flux, covered with churning seas, crafting its landscape through incessant volcanic eruptions. Amid all this tumult and disaster, life began. The earliest living things were no more than membranes stretched across microscopic gaps in...

Outlines a reassessment of human evolution that draws on recent fossil findings and challenges current theories to say that humans coexisted and competed across the African continent while exchanging genes, tools, and behaviors.

"A breakout bestseller in Italy, now available for American readers for the first time, Genesis: The Story of How Everything Began is a short, humanistic tour of the origins of the universe, earth, and life-drawing on the latest discoveries in physics toexplain the seven most significant moments in the creation of the cosmos"--

Why is the world the way it is? How did we get here? Does everything happen for a reason or are some things left to chance? Philosophers and theologians have pondered these questions for millennia, but startling scientific discoveries over the past half century are revealing that we live in a world driven by chance. A Series of Fortunate Events tells the story of the awesome power of chance and how it is the surprising source of all the beauty and...