Weaving together and explaining the latest discoveries and ideas from many disparate areas of modern science, this succinct and important book explains the truth about, and the beauty of, evolution.

Life is all around us, abundant and diverse, it is extraordinary. But what does it actually mean to be alive? Nobel prize-winner Paul Nurse has spent his career revealing how living cells work. In this book, he takes up the challenge of defining life in a way that every reader can understand. It is a shared journey of discovery; step by step he illuminates five great ideas that underpin biology. He traces the roots of his own curiosity and knowledge...

Why do bees know how to dance? Where do plants get sugar? How do animals know their mothers? Who discovered germs? The science of biology is the story of our quest to understand the living world and explain how its organisms work and interact - whether microbes, mushrooms, or mammals. In answering these and many other questions, we've discovered the mechanics of plants, animals, and the human body; explored the mysteries of DNA and genetic inheritance;...

For billions of years, Earth was an inhospitably alien place - covered with churning seas, slowly crafting its landscape by way of incessant volcanic eruptions, the atmosphere in a constant state of chemical flux. And yet, despite facing literally every conceivable setback, life has been extinguished and picked itself up to evolve again. Life has learned and adapted and continued through the billions of years that followed. From that first foray to...

Traversing six key frontiers of human biology, Daniel Davis shows how these radical possibilities have been made real - thanks to the ingenious, decades-long work of scientists whose breakthrough discoveries are transforming our understanding of how the body works, what it is capable of and how we might manipulate it. By bringing together the latest understanding of the immune system, the brain, the microbiome, the interaction of cells and the development...