Life Ascending: The Ten Great Inventions of Evolution by Nick Lane - Week 1: My Thought about the Book

For the reading assignment I chose to read Life Ascending: The Ten Great Inventions of Evolution by Nick Lane. The main reason I chose this book was because the first thought I had upon hearing about the book was that it must be like the two past books I've read for my biology class. The format is what mainly attracted me to the book; each chapter talking about a completely new evolutionary invention but still linking them together - I couldn't pass it up, I love this format ever since the first book of Integrative Biology I. In addition to this, it attracted me to see how Lane summarized the entire history of evolution in ten chapters. The ten evolutions are:

1. The Origin of Life
2. DNA
3. Photosynthesis
4. The Complex Cell
5. Sex
6. Movement
7. Sight
8. Hot Blood
9. Consciousness
10. Death

By reading this book I hope to simply gain a further understanding of evolution in general. But I am most looking forward to learning how all of these vital things we take for granted came about. The chapters of "Movement", "Sight", "Consciousness" and "Death" just sound so interesting and I cannot wait to read them. 

While doing research about the book and the author I came upon the following interesting facts:

• Nick Lane is a British Biochemist, who holds the position of honorary reader and is the first Provost's Venture Research Fellow at University College London.
• He has written two other books: Oxygen: The molecules that made the world, and  Power, Sex, Suicide: Mitochondria and the Meaning of Life.
• Life Ascending: The Ten Great Inventions of Evolution won the 2010 Royal Society Prize for Science Books.