The Tangled Tree: A Radical New History of Life

This is an unusual one for Quammen in that it features far less travel and getting out in the field, which you may or may not miss. It contains his trademark levity and enjoyment of a good scientific shit-storm but doesn't have quite the same focus that his better works have (Song of the Dodo remains his genre-bending masterpiece, and Outbreak the epitome of what a good popular science book should be). It was still enjoyable, but I got the feeling that Quammen never quite found the over-arching narrative that would give the book the shape it needed, and I spent a substantial period of time thinking that he was trying very hard to avoid mentioning Dawkins' Selfish Gene - which for all Dawkins' later idiocies did provide a useful reminder that selection happens on many levels and which starts to unpick some of the claimed inconsistencies of horizontal gene transfer.This review sounds more negative than the book deserves. It's still very readable and full of the usual surprising facts, but doesn't scale the heights that Quammen is capable of - something that left me slightly disappointed.

Quammen’s extraordinary book, The Tangled Tree, chronicles the fascinating history of our understanding of the evolution of life on Earth – and especially how humans fit into it. Quammen’s path through this history is narrated through the lives of scientists, past and present, with strikingly personal, respectful, sympathetic and intelligent interviews with them, their families and their colleagues.Using this detailed research gleaned over 4 years of travel, study and interviews, Quammen guides us from Darwin’s early theories of evolution in which life branched like a tree to the latest discoveries suggesting a more appropriate analogy of The Web of Life. He explains in meticulous detail how molecular biology and phylogenics have pieced together the evolution of simple single-cell prokaryotes into complex multi-celled eukaryotes, and even suggests how the primeval chemical mix combined to form amino acids to create RNA – the basis of all life on Earth.And some of his revelations are truly stunning. Such as the discovery of endosymbiosis – the implications of which make us humans wonder exactly what and who we are. Especially when learning that 8% (one twelfth!) of the human genome is from retroviruses.....This complex subject is explained with such clarity and enthusiasm that I could not put the book down. And I didn’t want to finish it. I unreservedly recommend The Tangled Tree – if you read and absorb this book you will know more about the origins and evolution of life than 99.999% of the world’s population! If there were more than 5 stars I would award them.

I’m not new to Quammen’s work. His Song of the Dodo is, to me, one of the great masterpieces of modern science writing and as a writer myself Quammen’s work is a standard to which I hope I will only one day meet. It goes without saying, then, that I came to The Tangled Tree with high expectations and I am pleased to say they have been exceeded. The book is a fascinating and compelling account of our understanding of the tree of life and, as the title suggests, how this is much more complicated – and tangled – than we might initially have expected. In short, the book tells the story of molecular phylogenetics, which is a new way of reading along and tracing the tree of life. It shows, for instance, that a sizeable percentage of the human genome comes not from traditional inheritance but sideways through infection by viruses.For many, I imagine, this book might be a disappointment (or pleasant surprise); unlike many more typical science books Quammen elects to tell his science through the lives of the scientists who made the discoveries in question. In many ways the book is as much a book on the history of science as it is on the science itself. Personally, and as someone who has training in both biology and in the history of science, I love this particular angle Quammen takes, but others might value a more straightforward approach. That said, the book is highly readable, full of surprising facts and superbly written. I recommend this book highly to anyone interested in life, genetics and the history of one of science’s more important developments in recent years. Five stars.

Having many DQ books there is one reason why you should buy his books - they are written so well unlike many other science writers - he makes you want to keep reading and gets you really into the topic area without realising it. Excellent use of words and consistent style throughout - 6*

brilliantly explained DNA etc