Explaining Life through Evolution
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- $23.99
Publisher Description
Discover the origin story of life on this planet in this fascinating exploration of the science of evolution—and why it matters to our future.
Prosanta Chakrabarty explains evolution in a concise, accessible, and engaging way, emphasizing the importance of understanding evolution in everyday contemporary life. Weaving his own lived experience among discussions of Darwin and the origins of evolutionary thought, Chakrabarty covers key concepts to our understanding of our current condition, including mutation; the spectrum of race, sex, gender, and sexuality; the limitations of ancestry tests; and the evolution of viruses like SARS-CoV-2, the virus at the heart of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Offering a contemporary update to classic popular evolution books by Stephen Jay Gould, and Jerry Coyne, Explaining Life through Evolution is not only an illuminating read, but also an essential guide to the kind of scientific literacy needed to face the challenges of our collective future.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
This eclectic primer by Chakrabarty (A Guide to Academia), a biology professor at Louisiana State University, explores the science of evolution. The author expounds on three proposed explanations for genetic variation: natural selection (survival of the fittest), sexual selection (survival of the most attractive), and Japanese biologist Motoo Kimura's "neutral theory of molecular evolution," which posits that much genetic difference between species is effectively random and has little bearing on individuals' ability to survive and reproduce. However, the presentation of the science is somewhat scattered, with tidbits about Aristotle's hierarchy of living creatures, the nature of truth, and what humans share with their distant marine ancestors (the larynx evolved from gills) jumbled together. Nonetheless, the freewheeling spirit sometimes works to the book's benefit (one amusing chapter offers a comic of Charles Darwin's life) and the author's humorous tone keeps the proceedings light ("Nipples on males—what's up with that?"). The strongest sections propose how science can inform political debates, as when Chakrabarty notes that the existence of same-sex mating across the animal kingdom casts doubt on the assumptions of those who consider homosexuality "unnatural." Pop science fans willing to look past some disorganization will be rewarded.
