Life Ascending
Life Ascending: The Ten Great Inventions of Evolution
by Nick Lane
-Reviewed by Alison Hanson
As Nick Lane shows in Life Ascending, seeing the inventiveness of nature doesn’t require seeing an intelligent designer. ‘To gain an insight into how all this came about,” he writes of life itself, “is the shared goal of scientists, whatever their religious beliefs.” Lane, a biochemist at University College of London, tells the history of life on Earth and the great innovations that made it possible, from photosynthesis and movement to sex and death.
Lane’s story, while neither …
