The Tangled Tree: A Radical New History of Life

Is there such a thing as a tree of life, or is it closer to a web? With his explanation of the branching of species, Darwin made the tree one of the central images of biology. But the last half-century of discoveries, especially the molecular-level understanding of what's known as horizontal gene transfer, in which genetic material makes its way into cells in newly comprehended ways, has complicated that picture. Quammen, one of the most authoritative of science journalists, not only explains those discoveries but tells the equally non-linear story of their development, with room for both idiosyncratic legends like Carl Woese as well as the lesser-known lab-bench heroes who also made them possible. Science, it seems, can be as messy as the structures it unearths.