Life: an Unauthorized BiographyA magisterial exploration of the natural history of the first four thousand million years of life on and in the earth, by one of Britains most dazzling science writers. What do any of us know about the history of our planet before the arrival of man? Most of us have a dim impression of a swirling mass of dust solidifying to form a volcanic globe, briefly populated by dinosaurs, then by woolly mammoths and finally by our own hairy ancestors. This book,