A daring new planetary history, one that focuses our attention on the beautiful and dynamic dance between life and Earth, from Olivia Judson, the bestselling and award-winning author of Dr. Tatiana’s Sex Advice to All Creation

How do we – living creatures – fit into the grand cosmic tapestry unfolding all around us? With rare style and radical originality, Olivia Judson proposes a grand new vision of the nature of life and advances a dazzling argument about how Earth went from an alien world utterly devoid of life 4.4 billion years ago to a planet of riotous life today. She describes how Earth gave rise to a new force of nature—lifeforms—and shows how, over vast spans of time, these lifeforms have acted to transform Earth. To tell this story, Judson divides the planet’s history into a series of five expansions—rock, light, oxygen, flesh, fire—each characterized by the evolution of lifeforms able to access a new source of energy. This conception not only provides a new way to think about the history of this planet, but also about the development of life-planet systems elsewhere.

In prose that is by turns erudite, philosophical, amusing, poetic, vivid, yet always accessible, Judson reveals astonishing connections between the microscopic and the cosmic, the animate and the inanimate, and (eventually) places us humans in the broader planetary and cosmic story. She explains where we have come from, how we differ from other lifeforms, and examines our deepest nature. This book brings a powerful mix of awe, solace, and wonder, and will forever change the way you see yourself and your planetary home.