Rating: 
Summary: An entertaining read
Review: There really is alot to like about Richard Fortey's book about the first 4 billion years of life on Earth. His style is very readable. I liked his uses of metaphors and similies when describing what an ancient animal looked like or did. While not a textbook and definately a bit thin for the amount of time he covered, I would recommend this book to anyone interested in our ancient past.
And while I do recommend the book, there are a few minor problems here. The first one was the fact that there is no table to know what time period he is referring to. I had to find one online, which is not that hard to do. Also, near the end of the book, Mr. Fortey seemed to be more interested in the conflicts between the scientists than the history of life at times. I understand that our knowledge of fossils and the new ways of dating and analyzing fossils causes us to re-examine older finds, but he basically didn't outline any development of the dinosaurs throughout the Mesozoic. Instead, he focussed more on the experts' fights with one another. I thought he did that too with the mammals during the Cenozoic, although not as much.
But those are minor problems that should not cause anyone to shy away from this book. It is a good, well written book that any non-expert can read and understand.
Rating: 
Summary: Fitting title for a rewarding read!
Review: This kind of book gives popular science a bad name. I believe popular science should tell you something about science, albeit in an entertaining and accessible way. While the book is entertaining for the most part, I came away feeling as if I had not learned much at all.A much-cited criticism of the book is that the author digresses into many personal anecdotes. This is true. Many are entertaining, a few are even enlightening, but too many take up space in a book that is already too short to do justice to the topic. For example, Fortey spends two pages telling us what he thought of Thailand while he was doing fieldwork there. We discover that the food was hot enough to make his nose run, but that blowing your nose in public is taboo in Thailand. Such conflict! He hides scraps of rolled-up newspaper in his pants pocket to deal with this crisis. The climax of the story: a female lounge singer touches him on his thigh, is startled by a roll, and wonders what it might be. Being a scientist myself, reading this made me feel like I was cornered by an awkward colleague at a cocktail party and was desperately trying to avoid another self-indulgent anecdote. This is one example of many that you will have to wade through to get to some natural history. On a happier note, Fortey does a reasonable job conjuring up images of worlds long past. He can describe the tropical jungles of the dinosaurs or more exotic landscapes well enough to give you some idea of what it would feel like. Even here, however, he often throws in a lame simile: "...where now there beats a sun that melts ice as fast as a hot frying pan melts butter". Cringe. I did learn a few things, however. The section describing the geological evidence for a meteor that causes the extinction of the dinosaurs was a high point. If you don't already know something about what the Cambrian Explosion is (I did), you will learn that too. I suppose any book on the subject will inevitably have some sparse educational value. It is telling, however, that there is no chronological chart that lays out the many geological periods, eras, and so on that we encounter in this book. Also, many species, classes, and orders are mentioned without any definition about what sets them apart. A tree of relationships would have been nice. Evidently, Fortey is not much concerned that we learn or understand any of this. Overall, Fortey underestimates and disappoints his audience. The book feels like it is supposed to entertain fidgety teenagers with glitz rather than inform educated adults. [Reviewer's Background: I am an atmospheric scientist, but someone who has never taken a course in paleontology. This is the first book I have read on natural history.]
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