Free Delivery Over $100
|
|
|||
|
||||
Awards
OverviewFor almost four billion years, microbes had the primordial oceans all to themselves. The stewards of Earth, these organisms transformed the chemistry of our planet to make it habitable for plants, animals, and us. Life's Engines takes readers deep into the microscopic world to explore how these marvellous creatures made life on Earth possible and how human life today would cease to exist without them. Paul Falkowski looks 'under the hood' of microbes to find the engines of life, the actual working parts that do the biochemical heavy lifting for every living organism on Earth. With insight and humour, he explains how these miniature engines are built and how they have been appropriated by and assembled like Lego sets within every creature that walks, swims, or flies. Falkowski shows how evolution works to maintain this core machinery of life, and how we and other animals are veritable conglomerations of microbes. A vibrantly entertaining book about the microbes that support our very existence, Life's Engines will inspire wonder about these elegantly complex nanomachines that have driven life since its origin. It also issues a timely warning about the dangers of tinkering with that machinery to make it more 'efficient' at meeting the ever-growing demands of humans in the coming century. Full Product DetailsAuthor: Paul G. FalkowskiPublisher: Princeton University Press Imprint: Princeton University Press Volume: 24 Dimensions: Width: 15.20cm , Height: 2.00cm , Length: 23.50cm Weight: 0.454kg ISBN: 9780691155371ISBN 10: 0691155372 Pages: 224 Publication Date: 27 April 2015 Audience: General/trade , College/higher education , General , Tertiary & Higher Education Format: Hardback Publisher's Status: Active Availability: Temporarily unavailable  The supplier advises that this item is temporarily unavailable. It will be ordered for you and placed on backorder. Once it does come back in stock, we will ship it out to you. Language: English Table of ContentsReviewsEntertaining, easy-to-read and historically rich. --Adrian Wolfson, Nature [Life's Engines] is full of surprises ... [I]mmensely rewarding. --Tim Flannery, New York Review of Books Entertaining, easy-to-read and historically rich. --Adrian Wolfson, Nature Personal stories, hard facts, and illuminative illustrations each contribute to this engaging examination of our microbial overlords ... Paul Falkowski's decades of study in various earth and life sciences fuel this excellent addition... Falkowski effectively uses analogies to convey abstract and complicated ideas. --Rachel Jagareski, Foreword Reviews Falkowski's loving examination sets out, life on this planet is organized by and for bacteria--the rest of us are just along for the ride. --Brian Bethune, Macleans [Life's Engines] is full of surprises ... [I]mmensely rewarding. --Tim Flannery, New York Review of Books Entertaining, easy-to-read and historically rich. --Adrian Wolfson, Nature Personal stories, hard facts, and illuminative illustrations each contribute to this engaging examination of our microbial overlords ... Paul Falkowski's decades of study in various earth and life sciences fuel this excellent addition... Falkowski effectively uses analogies to convey abstract and complicated ideas. --Rachel Jagareski, Foreword Reviews Falkowski's loving examination sets out, life on this planet is organized by and for bacteria--the rest of us are just along for the ride. --Brian Bethune, Macleans Falkowski brings a formidable breadth of scientific understanding to the task of explaining this, having worked as a biologist, an oceanographer and an astrobiologist. He moves easily between biological and earth sciences to help us understand the steps microscopic single-celled organisms took to make the planet habitable. --Cosmos [The] wonderful and awe-inspiring universe of the microbes, unseen creatures that have shaped the planet such that we may live in it, is engagingly presented by Paul Falkowski in a remarkable text entitled Life's Engines... The book's success is its utter simplicity. It tells the story of the history of life on our planet from a very personal perspective... I was so enthralled by this book from the get-go that I invite you to have a short taste of it. --Roberto Kolter, Cell Author InformationPaul G. Falkowski holds the Bennett L. Smith Chair in Business and Natural Resources at Rutgers University, where he studies how microbes have shaped the history of Earth. Tab Content 6Author Website:Countries AvailableAll regions |
||||
