Book Review: A Brief History of Earth
By Andrew H. Knoll
When Andrew Knoll promises a brief history of Earth, he isn’t kidding. Coming in at 230 pages (sans acknowledgements, further reading and index), his A Brief History of Earth manages to roll 4.3 billion years or so into eight chapters and, more impressively, does so with a pleasing dive not only into the dinosaurs but into the “sciencey” stuff as well. In fact, dinosaurs take the stage as only one group among the many varieties of life that have taken star turns on the planet, and while their demise is examined in some detail, the science that solved this murder mystery (if, that is, you agree with the current consensus that a 7-mile-wide asteroid slammed into the planet near the present-day Yucatan Peninsula and made one day around 65 million years ago pretty much the worst day ever . . . so far) takes the leading role over the dino drama and serves an intro to the four other lesser-known mass extinction events.
This firm grounding in science came as a pleasant surprise considering the size of the book, the scope of the subject and the intended audience, but Knoll is no dilettante. The Fisher Professor of Natural History at Harvard, Knoll’s deep background in geology, biology and planetary science equips him to be a master distiller of the planet’s long history into 80-proof science that a layperson can sip like a fine, peaty Scotch. (No, I have not been drinking. Yet.) Reminiscent of Kim Stanley Robinson’s Mars trilogy, each chapter is titled “Adjective Earth”—Chapter 1 is “Chemical Earth,” Chapter 2 is “Physical Earth,” Chapter 3 is “Biological Earth,” etc. In these first three chapters, he conveys the essential information about geochemistry, physical geology and evolutionary biology needed by a lay reader to understand how the Earth formed and how plate tectonics and life itself shaped the planet, walking us through the Big Bang, radioactivity, subduction zones, the Miller-Urey experiment, , the geologic time scale and the carbon cycle—heck, the sulfur cycle even gets some love in Chapter 3.
From Chapter 4 forward, we follow the story of the planet through the lens of the life and how it has changed—and how it has changed the planet—with time. The book ends with “Human Earth,” where Knoll traces human evolution and, back to the carbon cycle, the consequences of the Anthropocene. The facts are indisputable. And terrifying. And Knoll sticks with them, presenting them not in an impassioned rant as a prophet of doom but with the clarity and concern of someone who knows of what he speaks. You may not agree with his conclusions (or mine), but he provides the data as even-handedly as someone who understands the science as deeply as does possibly can.
Two complaints about the book itself. First off, the book is published by Custom House, an imprint of HarperCollins. I refuse to believe the deep pockets of HarperCollins could not spring for color illustrations. The points that Knoll is attempting to illustrate via photos and drawings are often blunted because the grayscale simply doesn’t provide enough contrast for the viewer to clearly see what the heck the author is talking about. The other “complaint” doubles as me breaking my arm patting myself on my back. In “Animal Earth,” Knoll talks about the Ediacaran fauna, providing a few pictures of fossils. I read the caption, glanced at Figure 29, kept reading, glanced at Figure 30 and as poorly presented as the black and white photos are, even I knew the text had it wrong: Figure 29 is a picture of Kimberella, while Figure 30 is a picture of an early mineralized exoskeleton of some unknown critter. Boo, copy editor, but yay me! This latter item is, of course, relatively trivial, but the lack of color illustrations is truly of consequence. Hopefully, the paperback edition remedies this problem. Knoll’s book deserves to be presented as beautifully as it is written. A Brief History of Earth is small in stature but weighty in subject and will be enjoyed by anyone interested in how science functions to explain nature and/or in the vast history and potential future of this planet and the life it hosts.
Learn more about Andrew H. Knoll and his work.