Paperback, 368 pages
English language
Published July 29, 2016 by W. W. Norton & Company.
It's interesting but a little difficult to get through. I feel like it could have been made simpler and more interesting. I read a lot of science books and don't usually have trouble following. With this one, I did. The topic is interesting, though.
I am not used to reading popular science books. Are they all so good? Especially the first half was very gripping, and had a lot of technical depth, but built it up in a way that I could still (barely) follow along. The odd bits about the history of research and researchers was good filler. I really needed some pages that did not introduce new biochemical concepts!
The first half is about how life started and why bacteria and archaea are different. It is built up like a crime story, where as each new twist is revealed you say "I knew it!", even though you did not. Unbelievable that I could have such a great ride on such a difficult topic! I learned a lot and I will not rest until everyone around me hates me for talking too much about the origin of life. Especially now that the day …
I am not used to reading popular science books. Are they all so good? Especially the first half was very gripping, and had a lot of technical depth, but built it up in a way that I could still (barely) follow along. The odd bits about the history of research and researchers was good filler. I really needed some pages that did not introduce new biochemical concepts!
The first half is about how life started and why bacteria and archaea are different. It is built up like a crime story, where as each new twist is revealed you say "I knew it!", even though you did not. Unbelievable that I could have such a great ride on such a difficult topic! I learned a lot and I will not rest until everyone around me hates me for talking too much about the origin of life. Especially now that the day I finished the book NASA announced finding hydrogen in Enceladus's plumes!
The second half derives the properties of eukaryotic life (like sex and aging) from its origin as an archaeon blessed with a bacterial endosymbiont. If I wanted to repeat the comparison to crime stories, this one felt more like the crime story where you do not quite understand what just happened, but hope that if you read the next chapter it will surely explain everything. (It does not.) My mind may have just been overwhelmed from the first half. The eukaryote's story was all about increasing or decreasing or otherwise influencing the selection pressures acting on mitochondria. I really should read it again to see if I am wrong (I probably am) but it felt like you can predict anything and its opposite in this setup. The host cell and the mitochondria are at odds in some cases, and other trade-offs exist as well. So whether X happens or its opposite, you can always "predict" it in hindsight by one or the other driving force.
That sounds more critical than I feel. The arguments about eukaryotes were persuasive actually, just not as powerful as the arguments in the first half. But it does not matter: I would give this book 5 stars and recommend it to everyone even if the second half was filled with empty pages. Or pages full of bacteria!
