Earth evolves. From first atom to molecule, mineral to magma,
granite crust to single cell to verdant living landscape, ours
is a planet constantly in flux. In this radical new approach to
Earth’s biography, senior Carnegie Institution researcher and
national best-selling author Robert M. Hazen reveals how the co-
evolution of the geosphere and biosphere - of rocks and living
matter - has shaped our planet into the only one of its kind in
the Solar System, if not the entire cosmos. With an
astrobiologist’s imagination, a historian’s perspective, and a
naturalist’s passion for the ground beneath our feet, Hazen
explains how changes on an atomic level translate into dramatic
shifts in Earth’s makeup over its 4.567 billion year existence.
He calls upon a flurry of recent discoveries to portray our
planet’s many iterations in vivid detail - from its fast-
rotating infancy when the Sun rose every 5 hours and the Moon
filled 250 times more sky than it does now, to its sea-bathed
youth, before the first continents aro