More than 150 years after Darwin's On the Origin of Species was published, scientists are beginning to understand how whales walked into the sea, how horses stood up on their tip-toes, how feathered dinosaurs took to the air, and how our ancestors came down from the trees. Still, evolution is often poorly represented by the media and misunderstood by the public, and so Brian Switek offers here a colorful history of evolutionary discovery that celebrates the variety and richness of life.

"It's poetry, serendipity, and smart entertainment because Switek has found the sweet spot between academic treatise and pop culture, a literary locale that is a godsend to armchair explorers everywhere."—Booklist