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Edited by Michael Ruse and Joseph Travis
1008 pp, $39.95
Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press, 2009
ISBN-13: 978-0-6740-3175-3

JAMA. 2009;302(1):96-97.

	Since this article does not have an abstract, we have provided the first 150 words of the full text and any section headings.

What a strange book! To begin with, Evolution, The First Four Billion Years is half a compendium of essays and half encyclopedia. The first 400 pages consist of 17 essays presenting subjects ranging from the geochemical origins of life and paleontology to the social, philosophical, and religious implications of evolutionary theory. The subsequent 531 pages comprise an alphabetical guide of 1- or 2-page entries on evolutionary terms and concepts and major evolutionary scientists; these entries range from "Adaptation and Natural Selection by George C. Williams (1964)" to "Yablokov, Alexei V. (b. 1933)."

I have been reading evolutionary literature and conducting research on evolutionary topics ranging from the origins of life to the evolution of culture for some 30 years. I even took a graduate course in which we read all of Darwin's notebooks. Even so, in reading this book I discovered many gaps in my knowledge of evolutionary theory. . . . [Full Text of this Article]

Robert Root-Bernstein, PhD, Reviewer
Department of Physiology
Michigan State University
East Lansing
rootbern@msu.edu

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