The Energy of Species

Trade Paperback

How Earth Made Life and Life Made Earth

Where did we come from? What does it mean to be 'alive'? And what is our place in the cosmos?

In her twenty-year journey to answer these questions, Olivia Judson has travelled to all seven continents and dived in several seas; she has made mental journeys to other worlds - the Moon, Venus, Mars; she has travelled back in time, haunted the rock collections of natural history museums, read scores of books and thousands of papers. The Co-Creation proposes a radical new way of understanding life on Earth: not as a story written in genes and DNA, but as one driven by energy.

Judson divides the history of our planet into five great epochas - rock, light, oxygen, flesh and fire - each marked by the unlocking of a new source of energy. Through these transformations, she argues, Earth evolved from a barren, asteroid-pummelled wasteland to the unique planet we inhabit today.

However, just as Earth made life, life itself became a powerful geological force that reshaped Earth - shifting the positions of continents, upheaving mountain ranges, changing the colour of the sky and causing vast oceans to open and close.

The Co-Creation reveals we are not merely occupiers of this planet, but integral to its very existence.