History and Life PDF Download

Author: Patricia Gutierrez-Smith
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : World history
Languages : en
Pages : 768

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Author: Richard Cowen
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
ISBN: 1118510933
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 832

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Book Description
This text is designed for students and anyone else with an interest in the history of life on our planet. The author describes the biological evolution of Earth’s organisms, and reconstructs their adaptations to the life they led, and the ecology and environment in which they functioned. On the grand scale, Earth is a constantly changing planet, continually presenting organisms with challenges. Changing geography, climate, atmosphere, oceanic and land environments set a stage in which organisms interact with their environments and one another, with evolutionary change an inevitable result. The organisms themselves in turn can change global environments: oxygen in our atmosphere is all produced by photosynthesis, for example. The interplay between a changing Earth and its evolving organisms is the underlying theme of the book. The book has a dedicated website which explores additional enriching information and discussion, and provides or points to the art for the book and many other images useful for teaching. See: www.wiley.com/go/cowen/historyoflife.

Author: Richard Fortey
Publisher: Vintage
ISBN: 0307761185
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 566

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By one of Britain's most gifted scientists: a magnificently daring and compulsively readable account of life on Earth (from the "big bang" to the advent of man), based entirely on the most original of all sources--the evidence of fossils. With excitement and driving intelligence, Richard Fortey guides us from the barren globe spinning in space, through the very earliest signs of life in the sulphurous hot springs and volcanic vents of the young planet, the appearance of cells, the slow creation of an atmosphere and the evolution of myriad forms of plants and animals that could then be sustained, including the magnificent era of the dinosaurs, and on to the last moment before the debut of Homo sapiens. Ranging across multiple scientific disciplines, explicating in wonderfully clear and refreshing prose their findings and arguments--about the origins of life, the causes of species extinctions and the first appearance of man--Fortey weaves this history out of the most delicate traceries left in rock, stone and earth. He also explains how, on each aspect of nature and life, scientists have reached the understanding we have today, who made the key discoveries, who their opponents were and why certain ideas won. Brimful of wit, fascinating personal experience and high scholarship, this book may well be our best introduction yet to the complex history of life on Earth. A Book-of-the-Month Club Main Selection With 32 pages of photographs

Author: Peter Ward
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA
ISBN: 1608199088
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 401

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The history of life on Earth is, in some form or another, known to us all--or so we think. A New History of Life offers a provocative new account, based on the latest scientific research, of how life on our planet evolved--the first major new synthesis for general readers in two decades. Charles Darwin's theories, first published more than 150 years ago, form the backbone of how we understand the history of the Earth. In reality, the currently accepted history of life on Earth is so flawed, so out of date, that it's past time we need a 'New History of Life.' In their latest book, Joe Kirschvink and Peter Ward will show that many of our most cherished beliefs about the evolution of life are wrong. Gathering and analyzing years of discoveries and research not yet widely known to the public, A New History of Life proposes a different origin of species than the one Darwin proposed, one which includes eight-foot-long centipedes, a frozen “snowball Earth”, and the seeds for life originating on Mars. Drawing on their years of experience in paleontology, biology, chemistry, and astrobiology, experts Ward and Kirschvink paint a picture of the origins life on Earth that are at once too fabulous to imagine and too familiar to dismiss--and looking forward, A New History of Life brilliantly assembles insights from some of the latest scientific research to understand how life on Earth can and might evolve far into the future.

Author: Ivan T. Berend
Publisher: Central European University Press
ISBN: 6155211779
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 286

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Berend's memoir offers an interesting case study, a subjective addition to the "objective" historical works on Central and Eastern European state socialism. It describes the hard choices of intellectuals in a dictatorial state: 1. remain in isolation, concentrate on scholarly works, and exclude politics in your personal life; 2. be in opposition, criticize and unveil the regime, accept discrimination and exclusion; 3. remain within the establishment and work for reforming the country using legal possibilities to criticize the regime and to achieve changes from within.The book raises basic historical questions and debates, compares East European and American higher education systems, and presents an eyewitness' insights on life in the United States.

Author: Henry Gee
Publisher: St. Martin's Press
ISBN: 1250276667
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 142

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The Royal Society's Science Book of the Year "[A]n exuberant romp through evolution, like a modern-day Willy Wonka of genetic space. Gee’s grand tour enthusiastically details the narrative underlying life’s erratic and often whimsical exploration of biological form and function.” —Adrian Woolfson, The Washington Post In the tradition of Richard Dawkins, Bill Bryson, and Simon Winchester—An entertaining and uniquely informed narration of Life's life story. In the beginning, Earth was an inhospitably alien place—in constant chemical flux, covered with churning seas, crafting its landscape through incessant volcanic eruptions. Amid all this tumult and disaster, life began. The earliest living things were no more than membranes stretched across microscopic gaps in rocks, where boiling hot jets of mineral-rich water gushed out from cracks in the ocean floor. Although these membranes were leaky, the environment within them became different from the raging maelstrom beyond. These havens of order slowly refined the generation of energy, using it to form membrane-bound bubbles that were mostly-faithful copies of their parents—a foamy lather of soap-bubble cells standing as tiny clenched fists, defiant against the lifeless world. Life on this planet has continued in much the same way for millennia, adapting to literally every conceivable setback that living organisms could encounter and thriving, from these humblest beginnings to the thrilling and unlikely story of ourselves. In A (Very) Short History of Life on Earth, Henry Gee zips through the last 4.6 billion years with infectious enthusiasm and intellectual rigor. Drawing on the very latest scientific understanding and writing in a clear, accessible style, he tells an enlightening tale of survival and persistence that illuminates the delicate balance within which life has always existed.

Author: Michael J. Benton
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0199226326
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 185

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Book Description
This Very Short Introduction presents a succinct and accessible guide to the key episodes in the story of life on earth - from the very origins of life four million years ago to the extraordinary diversity of species around the globe today.

Author: Randall M. Miller
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA
ISBN: 1610690338
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 1208

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With this book, students, teachers, and general readers get a most important look at primary documents—essentially history's "first draft"—revealing rare insights into how American life in past eras really was, and also about how professional historians begin their work. Daily Life through American History in Primary Documents presents a large sweep of American history through the voices of the American people themselves. This multivolume work explores the daily lives of American people from colonial times to the present through primary documents that include diaries, letters, memoirs, speeches, sermons, pamphlets, and all manner of public and private writings from "the people." The emphasis is on the variety of people's experiences as they ordered and lived their daily lives. The cast includes Americans of every class and condition, men and women, parents and children, free and "unfree," native-born and immigrant. Hundreds of images further illustrate American life as it developed over more than four centuries and as Americans moved across a continent. Organized both chronologically and topically, this collection invites many uses by students, teachers, librarians, and anyone wanting to discover what counted in American lives at any one time and over time. Its focus on primary documents encourages readers of the volume to explore specific and critical events by taking a firsthand look at the actual documents from which those events draw historical meaning. The documents show Americans at work, at home, at play, in the public square, in places of worship, and on the move. As such, they perfectly complement the acclaimed Greenwood Encyclopedia of Daily Life in America and will enrich any American history, social science, and sociology classroom.

Author: J. William Schopf
Publisher: Jones & Bartlett Learning
ISBN: 9780867202687
Category : Medical
Languages : en
Pages : 210

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Book Description
Major Events in the History of Life, present six chapters that summarize our understanding of crucial events that shaped the development of the earth's environment and the course of biological evolution over some four billion years of geological time. The subjects are covered by acknowledged leaders in their fields span an enormous sweep of biologic history, from the formation of planet Earth and the origin of living systems to our earliest records of human activity. Several chapters present new data and new syntheses, or summarized results of new types of analysis, material not usually available in current college textbooks.

Author: Ian Crofton
Publisher: Michael O'Mara Books
ISBN: 1782434305
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages :

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From the Big Bang to the future of our planet, The Little Book of Big History divides history into manageable but comprehensive time frames, encompassing the cosmos, the stars, life and everything in between. Big History is the attempt to understand and condense the entire story of the cosmos, from the Big Bang to the current day. Combining methods from history, astronomy, physics and biology to draw together the big story arcs of how the universe was created, why planets formed and how life developed, this creates a unique perspective from which to understand the place of mankind in the universe. Excited by the alternative 'framework for all knowledge' that is offered by this approach, Bill Gates is funding the Big History Project, which aims to bring the subject to a wider audience around the world. The Little Book of Big History breaks down the main themes of Big History into highly informative and accessible parts for all readers to enjoy. By giving a truly complete timeline of world events, this book shines a whole different light on history as we learned it and makes us think of our history - and our future - in a very different way.