Vital Question: Energy, Evolution, and the Origins of Complex Life

“One of the deepest, most illuminating books about the history of life to have been published in recent years.” —The EconomistThe Earth teems with life: in its oceans, forests, skies and cities. Yet there’s a black hole at the heart of biology. We do not know why complex life is the way it is, or, for that matter, how life first began. In The Vital Question, award-winning author and biochemist Nick Lane radically reframes evolutionary history, putting forward a solution to conundrums that hav…