Neil Shubin is a paleontologist who delves briefly into the history of the human body by way of fossils and DNA evidence. Sure, I learned stuff... like how interconnected all the species really are; and that mammals have three bones in the inner ear while other species have fewer; and that there's a gene called Sonic hedgehog; and how to extract DNA using common household appliances and items you could easily buy in a store (a blender is involved and I'm easily reminded of the Bass-O-Matic). But, really this short book (just over 200 pages) was a bit of a slog to get through (although the explanations are clear enough). I've read other non-fiction that was much more compelling. But if you've an interest in fossils and DNA and where we came from, you might find this enlightening. But since this book deals with actual science, I definitely wouldn't recommend this book to Creationists. Though I suppose a Creationist wouldn't be picking up a title like this one in the first place. They're probably looking for something more along the lines of Your Inner Godliness: A Journey Into the Four Thousand Year History of the Human Body. But I digress. ( )

Neil Shubin is a mixture of a paleontologist and some kind of a DNA researcher, which gives him a unique take as a professor of human anatomy. He brings these all together in an enjoyable and very accessible form here.

As this subtitle tells us, this is a look at why we humans are constructed the way we are from an evolutionary perspective. So we learn that the nerves which control our facial expressions follow crazy whirling paths through our heads, and also connect to our ears — and Shubin tells us why. Or he gives us an evolutionary explanation of why we lose our balance when we get drunk. (Our inner ears developed form little organs fish use to detect water movement. And the fluid they developed happens to mix poorly with alcohol.) In general he points out that we are kind of like a souped-up Volkswagen Beetle — we are a more primitive life form that has been awkwardly modified for each new evolutionary challenge — and that is the source of practically all our health problems.

Shubin spends the book tracing many of these modifications back as far down the evolutionary tree as he can get, and quite a few go all the way to the single-cell animals. It's a good story.

One of the more enjoyable aspects of the book are his asides about his personal experience searching for fossils in the field. In one story he describes being a grad student and looking so carefully at an outcrop and failing to find a single fossil — while the rest of the group were filling bags with fossils. His problem was that he had to learn to tune his eyes to recognize the right kinds of patterns and textures. This was something I can relate to. I remember a day as grad student looking so carefully at a Kansas roadside outcrop, and seeing just a simple flat limestone bed of certain vague characteristics. After a while our professor walked up and starting pointing out various features right in front of us — fossil root trails, discolored surfaces, textural changes. I had looked right at them without seeing them. These are fossil soil features on a marine rock unit. Suddenly I was able to get new a sense of the ocean rising and falling; an entire dynamic environment began to come alive. ( )

Neil Shubin was involved with the discovery of Tiktaalik, a very important fossil. In this book he describes that discovery, and also describes which parts of our bodies are evolved from which other parts in ancient animals. It is very understandably written and gives a great introduction into human evolution. ( )

A book well written with a lot of information. A passionate description of the relationships between us (our body) and all the life that came before us (fish, worms, flies, ..).
I wish "intelligent design" believers spend more time reading good books like this instead of wasting their time studying legends from the bronze age (aka bible). ( )

Neil Shubin manages to take a potentially dry subject and transform it into a very accessible and enjoyable account of man's evolution from simple cells. For such a vast and academic subject, there is nary a dry flat moment. His success is that there is enough detail to engage, yet the ideas and discoveries are simply put and clearly explained and really quite fascinating. Read this if you are interested in evolution and the connections between living things. If you would be fascinated by the fact that human male tendency to develop hernia is because he evolved from the shark whose testes were up at the forward part of its body, or perhaps that two of our middle ear bones are derived from the jawbones of fish, then this book is for you.

It would be good present for a budding medical student ready to tackle anatomy. It is a good book to fill the gaps in knowledge that biologists have discovered in the last twenty years. It certainly puts our relative importance firmly in our miniscule evolutionary place amongst the millions of billions of years of creatures that preceding us. I was impressed with this fascinating read. ( )