The Universe Within: Discovering the Common History of Rocks, Planets, and People

I really enjoyed this book. It is packed with interesting popular science tit-bits, presented in an engaging style, interwoven with the author’s personal experiences and the lives of various scientists.

Don’t expect to learn anything revolutionary or ground-breaking. This book, in parts, is a science primer. There was some material I already knew pretty well, and some parts, such as his explanation of the causes of earth’s seasons, and the discussion of tectonic plates, I have known since geography classes at age 13. It is a bit like Bill Bryson’s Short History of Nearly Everything.

I really enjoyed the sections covering the Big Bang, how elements are formed inside stars, and what it’s like on Neptune and Mars. His discussion of the effect of gravity on mammalian body size is compelling, and includes the following observation, which is typical of the author’s entertaining style: ‘if you drop a mouse down a 1000m mine shaft, it gets up and walks away; a rat is killed; a human is broken; a horse splashes!”.

The story meanders from subject to subject. It is ostensibly about the impact of the cosmos and the laws of physics on our daily lives, but sometimes it wanders off at a tangent and you forget the core theme of the book. For this reason, and the fact that I was distracted by hedge-cutting while I listened, I took the unprecedented step of listening to the book twice. I picked up a lot of interesting stuff that I’d missed first time around.

The narrator is excellent and, as long as you are not looking for anything too cerebral, this is great popular science.

Fun and easy to follow listen. Ties together Darwin's evolution of man with the evolution of the universe and some of its constituent parts. If your like me and you just can't get enough about evolution and our place in the universe (who among us can?), than I would recommend this short, well written and informative book.

The joy of this book isn't the science it presents, which must be pretty well known for anyone who has even a passing interest in science. The joy of it is the combination of the knowledge into one large tapestry, making the information feel new and exciting. Bringing in information from physics and astrophysics, plate tectonics, evolutionary biology, genetics, and more the reader moves from the stars to a time when water was the happening place for life, and land was barren, to that great moment 200 million years ago when the birth of the Atlantic allowed for the oxygen necessary for mammalian gestation. If our high schoolers were reading science this fun, we might have more scientists.

Yes, because it's loaded with interesting information.

I have read or listened to many books related to this topic. It is amazing how they all seem to refer to different scientists who bring new insights and make our understanding that much better.

It would be in the top 10. So many great audio books.

Fact based, The author took me step-by-step through the mystery, the beauty, the amazing insights of science.

When I finished, I was more grounded than ever and more spiritual as well.

I also felt that I should have spent the last thirty years in science rather than in the study of religion. Here is a religion that works. [Or, here is why so many religions do not work]

I have not listened to Marc before - his voice is pleasing, his pace just right; his words are clear.

Yes, the Howling Monkeys and human color vision - I could see 2.9 million years of my development.

Any book that helps me grasp the complexities of evolution, is wanted.

The title sounded interesting, but the execution was flawed. Although the book was sprinkled with factoids about nature, there was no over arching structure to hold it together.