<p><b>Winner of the Royal Society Science Book.</b><br><br><b>'Exhilaratingly whizzes through billions of years . . . Gee is a marvellously engaging writer' - <i>The Times</i></b><br><br>For billions of years, Earth was an inhospitably alien place – covered with churning seas, slowly crafting its landscape through volcanic eruptions, the atmosphere in a constant state of chemical flux. And yet, despite facing literally every conceivable setback that living organisms could encounter, life has been extinguished and picked itself up to evolve again.<br><br>From that first foray to the spread of early hominids who later became <i>Homo sapiens</i>, life has persisted, undaunted. <i>A (Very) Short History of Life: 4.6 Billion Years in 12 Chapters</i> is an enlightening story of survival, of persistence, illuminating the delicate balance within which life has always existed,
