A Becoming Earth: How Our Planet Came to Life

A radically thought-provoking account of a major shift in how we understand our Earth, not simply as an inanimate planet on which life evolved, but rather as a planet that came to life, from the heart of the Amazon rainforest to the soil in our gardens.

The notion of a living world is one of humanity’s oldest beliefs. Though once scorned by many scientists, the concept of Earth as a vast interconnected living system has gained acceptance in recent decades. Life not only adapts to its surroundings – it also shapes them in dramatic and enduring ways. Over billions of years, life transformed a lump of orbiting rock into our cosmic oasis, breathing oxygen into the atmosphere, concocting the modern oceans, and turning rock into fertile soil. Life is intertwined with Earth’s capacity to regulate its climate and maintain balance.

Through compelling narrative, evocative descriptions, and lucid explanations, Ferris Jabr shows us how Earth became the world we’ve known, how it is rapidly becoming a very different world, and how we will determine what kind of Earth our descendants inherit for millennia to come.

About the Author

Ferris Jabr is a contributing writer for The New York Times magazine and Scientific American. He has also written for The New Yorker, The Atlantic, Harper’s, Foreign Policy, National Geographic, Wired, Outside, McSweeney’s, and the Los Angeles Review of Books, among other publications. He lives in Portland, Oregon. Becoming Earth is his first book.

Reviews

"A glorious paean to our living world, full of achingly beautiful passages, mind-bending conceptual twists, and wonderful characters. Ferris Jabr reveals how Earth not only gave rise to life, and now teems with it, but has also been profoundly, miraculously shaped by it." —Ed Yong, author of An Immense World, winner of the Royal Society Science Book Prize

"I did not expect to experience joy when I opened Becoming Earth, but I did, and I do. The ambition, eloquence, and erudition in this dragonfly droneflight of a book are absolutely exhilarating." —John Vaillant, author of Fire Weather, winner of the Baillie Gifford Prize

"Fascinating, thought-provoking, and, ultimately, inspiring" —Elizabeth Kolbert, author of The Sixth Extinction, winner of the Pulitzer Prize for General Nonfiction

"An astonishing book, weaving together science, history, and the author's unfailingly precise observations with the grace of a poet." —Steve Silberman, author of NeuroTribes: The Legacy of Autism and the Future of Neurodiversity, winner of the Baillie Gifford Prize

"This wondrous book reveals our living planet for the miracle that it is. By the end, you may even feel that 'miracle' is an understatement. The story of Earth is the story of a planet reworked, remade – and, to an astonishing degree, created – by life itself. Wow." —Carl Safina, author of Beyond Words: What Animals Think and Feel

Dimensions: 15.2 x 2.3 x 23.4 cm