The author is one of the world’s best-known and most respected science writers. This book is a personal and unique distillation of the wisdom he has developed in a lifetime of dealing with man’s effort to resolve the paradoxes of nature.

Life has invaded nearly every crack and crevasse of the world during the billion years since it left its first traces on this planet. It has adjusted itself to all extremes of living, from nearly airless mountaintops five miles high to lightless floors of oceans five miles deep. It has found abodes in boiling hot springs and in the everlasting ice of Antarctic peaks. It very likely has invaded the cold, red deserts of Mars. Everywhere it has succeeded in altering the garments it wears to meet the stresses it has experienced.

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