The Story of Earth: The First 4.5 Billion Years, from Stardust to Living Planet

I read this fascinating book for a book club we belong to, and I highly recommend it. Written to be accessible to the average reader (scientific terms aside), it is a crash course in geology, chemistry, astronomy, biology, cosmology, mineralogy, meteorology, paleontology, geophysics and other scientific disciplines. Hazen cites case after case where the "settled science" was overturned by new discoveries and new theories, saying, "It's a funny thing about conventional wisdom, though. Eventually, someone will challenge what everyone knows to be true, and once in a while something fairly interesting will be found." (p-87) He describes a theory he and colleagues were working on that went against the settled science: "Stanley Miller and his followers did what they could to squelch our conclusions and abort our research program. ... 'The vent hypothesis is a real loser,' Miller complained in a 1998 interview. 'I don't understand why we have to even discuss it.'" (P-136) Sounds like the way the efforts of any scientist who questions Anthropogenic Global Warming (AGW) is treated today. Hazen and his colleagues theory is now the "settled science." He cites the "settled science" that the continents had never been together...until they had. And the "settled science" that there was almost no water on Mars...until there was. He notes that there have been six ice ages in the last three million years, and that both hot and cold cycles have ruled the Earth and will certainly come again. "Change is the central theme of Earth's story. The oceans and atmosphere, the surface and deep interior, the geosphere and biosphere--all aspects of our planet have changed incessantly over the aeons." (P-193) "As in the past, Earth will continue to be a planet of incessant flip-flop patterns of change. The climate will become warmer, then cooler, over and over again." He cites the hopefully-far-away certainty of a massive asteroid strike or a mega-volcano eruption, which if massive enough would exterminate the higher life forms--like us. (I have read elsewhere of the possible mega-eruption of the Yellowstone Caldara, which would release hundreds of tons of ash in the air, making much of the US uninhabitable, and doing the world no good. Apparently theses "super-eruptions" happen every 600,000 to 800,000 years. The last one was 630,000 years ago.) Though he couches his statements carefully, Hazen clearly believes that AGW is the "settled science." That may be sincerely held belief, or reflective that any academic who wishes to study the subject without being already firmly committed to an outcome demonstrating AGW will find that he is shunned, his research funding dried up, and tenure or promotion unlikely. Earlier he states that most of the carbon in the atmosphere is put there by volcanoes. Maybe we need an executive order against volcanoes. As the US has cut back in carbon, China and India have doubled down, building new coal-fired electric plants at a terrific rate. I personally think free, unbiased research should be allowed, but if GW is man made, what the US does, even destroying the middleclass and beggaring the poor, won't help. The Third World will sign agreements hoping for a cash transfer, but won't keep them when it is inconvenient. As John Kery said, "If all the industrial nations went down to zero emissions – remember what I just said, all the industrial emissions went down to zero emissions – it wouldn’t be enough, not when more than 65 percent of the world’s carbon pollution comes from the developing world." In my view, we not only need more research, but preparation for dealing with warming if it comes. But I remember the 70s, when a new ice age was the "settled science," and also all my professors telling me the "Population Bomb" was settled science and there would be mass famine in the US by the 1990, plus a depletion of all the important minerals. I decided not to have kids, and it was all as false as Al Gore's prediction of an ice-free arctic by the summer of 2013. Still, despite the obligatory PC Kowtow to AGW, required on pain of getting a job in the private sector of all academics today, I think Hazen is an honest scientist, and this book well-worth reading. Robert A. Hall Author: The Coming Collapse of the American Republic

This is not the book I thought it was when I bought it. I was expecting more of an evolutionary history of life on Earth. Probably a full 80-90% of this book is essentially a geological history of the planet, and I'm no geologist. To my surprise, however, I found every page of this wonderful book to be of far more interest than I could ever have imagined. It seems seven or eight fascinating new facts ― new to me, anyway ― jump off of every page. And this doesn’t even begin to get at the implications that arise as all those facts pile up higher and higher. Very easily, this book is extraordinary for putting geological time in its proper proportions. Most of us struggle with thinking about a few thousand years, much less millions and billions of years. I've never read another book that keeps all the temporal perspectives in such fine proportion. One minor nuisance is the dual manner of dating events in this book. Sometimes the author reports key events in millions of years ago; at other times, however, he starts the clock running forward at the origin of the planet. Sometimes therefore a little mental subtraction is required to keep events in their appropriate chronological order. One other issue perhaps is that Robert M Hazen's small book is from 2012: far less than an eye blink in geological time, but a long time indeed in science. I don't know whether an updated version is in the works. Regardless, this is one of the most fascinating and most well-written science books I've ever read. This one will change your perspective about . . . all kinds of things.

That the Earth has had a long history is indisputable, as the pages of that history are written in the very stone on which we build. The author is very adept at reading that history and retelling it in a manner easily understood by any potential reader. In a book of this size, and a topic of this complexity, it is inevitable that compromises have had to be made. I found the nature of the author's discussions to be a bit overly simplified, and over the course of the whole book somewhat repetitive. I think the author's target audience level would be described as the typical liberal arts college graduate who has had a smattering of science courses. I think the author succeeds well in writing for that audience. Those readers with a bit more science background would expect more from a volume titled as this one is. Nevertheless, by and large, the book is a good read, and well worth the price. One additional comment: I didn't have a print version of the book to compare with my Kindle edition, but I suspect the print edition has some illustrations in it. There are places in the text that seem to cry out, "Put an illustration here!" But... none are found. Now, it is possible that neither version has illustrations, but... I am doubtful this is the case.

『地球進化 46億年の物語』 ブルーバックス2014/5/21として翻訳が出版されている． 監修付きの訳本であるが，それほど専門的ではないので…．オリジナルの英語のペンギンブックス版には図が一つもない．訳は本屋で見たところ白黒だがイラスト付きである．それがいいのかどうかはわからない．というのは，GoogleやYouTubeできれいな画像は簡単に確認できし，著者もそう指摘しているからである． 原文は非常に読みやすいので英語の試験などにはもってこいだろう．星が一つ少ないのは，この本で書かれていることはすでにNational Geographicなどで紹介されてしまっていて，いまとなっては新味に欠けるかなというところである．そして，とことん数値がなくいわゆるdescriptiveな説明である．化学式もほとんど登場しない．かなりspeculativeなところが多いので，もっと違う学説もあるはずである．最近では，ダーク・マターが絶滅に関係している，つまり地球内部で反応が活発になり火山活動が盛んになったというような仮説まである．ある意味確証のない仮説に近い言説が，そうでないものと混合されて述べられている． とはいえ，地球とは全球凍結もすれば温暖化もする，プラスのフィードバックのかかりやすいシステムなのだということ，最近の5億年は植物のCO2吸収とO2の放出による生物と地質との共進化のシステムだということ，つまらない10億年といわれた世代も，実際は地質の絶え間ない変動があった興味深い10億年だったということも慧眼の研究者によって明らかにされてきたということ，これらが印象に残った．5億年以前にも生物はいたのだからもっと別のstoryもありうるのではないかとも思う．ともかく化石がないわけだからわからないはずだ．ということは，タイトルとしては，A Storyなのではないかとも思いたくなる．

This book describes comprehensively the evolution of the earth, from the time of the big bang to the present, and in the final chapter there are short and long term forecasts of the future and what we can do to influence it (2 billion years on, whatever we do, the earth will be swallowed by an expanding sun). The writing style is highly readable. In particular, the chapters describing early continent formation by coalescence of multiple islands of granite floating in molten basalt, the formation of the moon after a cataclysmic collision between the earth and another planet, and theories of the emergence of life, are thoughtfully presented and informative. In the section on mineral formation the basic concepts are clearly explained, although some knowledge of elementary chemistry would help. Conditions at the earth’s surface at the different geological periods are vividly described, including, for instance, tidal movements of molten rocks moving backwards and forwards under the influence of the moon, and huge explosions following asteroid hits. The author emphasises the importance of the interface between geology and biology, describing how interactions between the rocks and the animals and plants that live here have shaped the world we know today. The book also includes some history of the discoveries and the relationships and conflicts of the scientists involved. I liked this book very much for both the completeness of the content and for its easy readability. I highly recommend it for anyone without previous knowledge wanting to learn about Earth’s formation and evolution.

I could not help myself with the title of my review. This book is actually mostly about rocks. But if you want to write about the history of our planet it will be a history about geology and much less about biology. Professor Hazen has tried to compress 4.5 billion years of history into a book of 300 pages. He has succeeded very well. He has written about our planet going through several stages of development and he manages to explain and link them together so you experience a 4.5 billion fast trip through history. Finding a similar book will not be easy since most books about pre-human history tends to focus on dinosaurs or other biological life in our past. Professor Hazen writes in an easy and clear way. He is interlinking the story with personal memories that helps creating a book that is not some dry academic textbook but instead a book that anyone with an interest in our past could pick up and enjoy. These are no illustrations in the book. It would have helped to have a few so that instead of explaining in text about continental drift you could just show us but in a typical modern way we are instead proposed to check out a Webb-site where we can see this in an animated way. Still if you read in bed those Webb-sites are probably not instantly available. The Book ends with his discussion about our future. It is mostly a very bleak one. I wish he could have been more optimistic but I am afraid he is right. This is a book well worth reading. I recommend it warmly.

Must read, clear understandable engrossing explanation of Earth's chemical and geological evolution.

The author told the story of the begining of the earth and every thing on it in a fascinating way. I havs physics and astrnomy background, I had many questions, doubts, missing links in my mind regarding the process of formation of the earth. Many of these queries are answered with ease (using scientific explanation but easy to understand) by the geologist author, which a physicist would/could not have think from their area of knowledge.