Read Anywhere and on Any Device!

Subscribe to Read | $0.00

Join today and start reading your favorite books for Free!

Create Free Account

Quick and Easy Sign Up!

It takes less then 1 minute to sign up, then you can enjoy Unlimited eBooks.

Sign Up Browse

Read Anywhere and on Any Device!

  • Download on iOS
  • Download on Android
  • Download on iOS

Life's Engines: How Microbes Made Earth Habitable

Paul G. Falkowski
4.02/5 (387 ratings)
Read Now Download Now
The marvelous microbes that made life on Earth possible and support our very existence

For almost four billion years, microbes had the primordial oceans all to themselves. The stewards of Earth, these organisms transformed the chemistry of our planet to make it habitable for plants, animals, and us. Life's Engines takes readers deep into the microscopic world to explore how these marvelous creatures made life on Earth possible--and how human life today would cease to exist without them.

Paul Falkowski looks "under the hood" of microbes to find the engines of life, the actual working parts that do the biochemical heavy lifting for every living organism on Earth. With insight and humor, he explains how these miniature engines are built--and how they have been appropriated by and assembled like Lego sets within every creature that walks, swims, or flies. Falkowski shows how evolution works to maintain this core machinery of life, and how we and other animals are veritable conglomerations of microbes.

A vibrantly entertaining book about the microbes that support our very existence, Life's Engines will inspire wonder about these elegantly complex nanomachines that have driven life since its origin. It also issues a timely warning about the dangers of tinkering with that machinery to make it more "efficient" at meeting the ever-growing demands of humans in the coming century.
Format:
Hardcover
Pages:
256 pages
Publication:
2015
Publisher:
Princeton University Press
Edition:
1st
Language:
eng
ISBN10:
0691155372
ISBN13:
9780691155371
kindle Asin:
B0BQZJRRST

Life's Engines: How Microbes Made Earth Habitable

Paul G. Falkowski
4.02/5 (387 ratings)
Read Download
The marvelous microbes that made life on Earth possible and support our very existence

For almost four billion years, microbes had the primordial oceans all to themselves. The stewards of Earth, these organisms transformed the chemistry of our planet to make it habitable for plants, animals, and us. Life's Engines takes readers deep into the microscopic world to explore how these marvelous creatures made life on Earth possible--and how human life today would cease to exist without them.

Paul Falkowski looks "under the hood" of microbes to find the engines of life, the actual working parts that do the biochemical heavy lifting for every living organism on Earth. With insight and humor, he explains how these miniature engines are built--and how they have been appropriated by and assembled like Lego sets within every creature that walks, swims, or flies. Falkowski shows how evolution works to maintain this core machinery of life, and how we and other animals are veritable conglomerations of microbes.

A vibrantly entertaining book about the microbes that support our very existence, Life's Engines will inspire wonder about these elegantly complex nanomachines that have driven life since its origin. It also issues a timely warning about the dangers of tinkering with that machinery to make it more "efficient" at meeting the ever-growing demands of humans in the coming century.
Format:
Hardcover
Pages:
256 pages
Publication:
2015
Publisher:
Princeton University Press
Edition:
1st
Language:
eng
ISBN10:
0691155372
ISBN13:
9780691155371
kindle Asin:
B0BQZJRRST

More Books

Eve: How the Female Body Drove 200 Million Years of Human Evolution

Cat Bohannon

Transformer: The Deep Chemistry of Life and Death

Nick Lane

Seven And A Half Lessons About The Brain

Lisa Feldman Barrett

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

Nick Lane

Life Ascending: The Ten Great Inventions of Evolution

Nick Lane

The Song of the Cell: An Exploration of Medicine and the New Human

Siddhartha Mukherjee

I Contain Multitudes: The Microbes Within Us and a Grander View of Life

Ed Yong

Red Famine: Stalin's War on Ukraine

Anne Applebaum

Pathogenesis: A History of the World in Eight Plagues

Jonathan Kennedy

Gli ingranaggi di Dio. Dal caos molecolare alla vita

Peter M. Hoffmann

Genes, Peoples, and Languages

Luigi Luca Cavalli-Sforza

How Infrastructure Works: Inside the Systems That Shape Our World

Deb Chachra