“Every Living Thing” offers a profound exploration into the history of classifying life on earth, with a primary focus on Linnaeus and Buffon.

The book is dense but is ab excellent dive into the history of taxonomy. Reading this just perfectly coincided with the recent news of a speciation proposal for two ecotypes of killer whales in the North Pacific, which stirred up lots of talk about speciation and taxonomy.

The author takes readers through the lives of both Linnaeus and Buffon, and following their deaths continues to trace the notable names as the science of classification moved forward to what we know today. Through this, the author does touch on the issues with varying classification systems and ways of thinking, especially the use of Linnaeus’s classification of races to inform racial pseudoscience and white supremacy. One thing that wasn’t touched on much but would have been a good addition is the intersection of these classification systems and colonization.

As I read, I found myself gravitating more to Buffon’s perspectives. Seeing nature as fluid is more intuitive but science has benefited from being able to (mostly) neatly categorize life. The book does a great job explaining these nuances and just why classification has been beneficial (an example being how speciation can help with conservation work today).

The interwoven religious issues to Linnaeus and Buffon’s work was very interesting and something I hadn’t thought much on. Buffon was impressive for defying the dominate religious beliefs regarding nature.

Overall, I think this is a great read to dive into the history of taxonomy and fields of biology (& even genetics!)

I received a free ARC via NetGalley for this book. Thank you to NetGalley, publisher and author!

This book was really interesting!
Through the biographies and work of the two, we get a good understand of their opposing views of nature, life and evolution, as well as added perspectives from other authors and scientists.

I will say, this book is a bit heavy and required full focus so it took me a long time to read it, as I could only read os much in a day as there is so much information to absorb, but it was worth it.

Thank you NetGalley and Penguin Random House Canada, Doubleday Canada for the opportunity to read this ARC.