Emily Recommends: Remarkable Creatures

My parents are the best recommenders of books I know. This one comes through my dad, the geology major: Remarkable Creatures: Epic Adventures in the Search for the Origins of Species, by Sean Carroll.

I can't put it down.

Well written, quickly paced, Carroll offers us a chapter each on intrepid explorers whose work in different fields of science led us to fill in the missing links in our understanding of how life on this planet evolved. Their journeys takes us to Darwin's Galapagos, to the Amazon, to Java, to the Mongolian plains, to the Rockies--and I'm only half way through. Want to know how someone figured out what killed the dinosaurs? It's in here. And it reads like a novel.

I highly recommend this book, especially if

• you are fascinated with how new ideas are conceived and introduced to the doubting public
• are curious and like to learn
• like real-life adventure stories
• have a child who wants to spend all of his time poking around outdoors, ignoring much of school (as this was the childhood of most of the explorers.)

Do let me know what you think.