The Story of Earth

The First 4.5 Billion Years, from Stardust to Living Planet

By: Robert M. Hazen

Narrated by: Walter Dixon

Length: 9 hrs and 56 mins

Publisher's summary

Earth evolves. From first atom to molecule, mineral to magma, granite crust to single cell to verdant living landscape, ours is a planet constantly in flux. In this radical new approach to Earth’s biography, senior Carnegie Institution researcher and national best-selling author Robert M. Hazen reveals how the co-evolution of the geosphere and biosphere - of rocks and living matter - has shaped our planet into the only one of its kind in the Solar System, if not the entire cosmos.

With an astrobiologist’s imagination, a historian’s perspective, and a naturalist’s passion for the ground beneath our feet, Hazen explains how changes on an atomic level translate into dramatic shifts in Earth’s makeup over its 4.567 billion year existence. He calls upon a flurry of recent discoveries to portray our planet’s many iterations in vivid detail - from its fast-rotating infancy when the Sun rose every 5 hours and the Moon filled 250 times more sky than it does now, to its sea-bathed youth, before the first continents arose; from the Great Oxidation Event that turned the land red, to the globe-altering volcanism that may have been the true killer of the dinosaurs. Through Hazen’s theory of “co-evolution,” we learn how reactions between organic molecules and rock crystals may have generated Earth’s first organisms, which in turn are responsible for more than two-thirds of the mineral varieties on the planet - thousands of different kinds of crystals that could not exist in a nonliving world.

The Story of Earth is also the story of the pioneering men and women behind the sciences. Listeners will meet black-market meteorite hawkers of the Sahara Desert, the gun-toting Feds who guarded the Apollo missions’ lunar dust, and the World War II Navy officer whose super-pressurized “bomb” - recycled from military hardware - first simulated the molten rock of Earth’s mantle. As a mentor to a new generation of scientists, Hazen introduces the intrepid young explorers whose dispatches from Earth’s harshest landscapes will revolutionize geology.

Celebrated by The New York Times for writing “with wonderful clarity about science . . . that effortlessly teaches as it zips along,” Hazen proves a brilliant and entertaining guide on this grand tour of our planet inside and out. Lucid, controversial, and intellectually bracing, The Story of Earth is popular science of the highest order.

©2012 Robert M. Hazen (P)2012 Gildan Media, LLC

Critic reviews

“A fascinating new theory on the Earth’s origins written in a sparkling style with many personal touches. . . . Hazen offers startling evidence that ‘Earth’s living and nonliving spheres’ have co-evolved over the past four billion years.” ( Kirkus Reviews)

The "Greatest Story Ever Told" : -)

If you could sum up The Story of Earth in three words, what would they be?

Paleozoic, Mesozoic, Cenozoic.

If you were to make a film of this book, what would the tag line be?

"The Greatest Story Ever Told II"'

Any additional comments?

Good introduction to the newest ideas about geology." Newer" meaning the integrated view of Earth as both an organic and inorganic symbiotic system. How life created Earth and Earth created life. Versus the the older way of thinking about "rocks" being separated from
"animals." Also gives sense of Deep Time and Earth as a dynamic, changing thing. We can no longer think that "the mountains are eternal." Quite the contrary.

*Narration is good. But I wish that pace could be a little slower, with pauses after important points. Scientific subjects require processing time. This is one area where audio books are inferior to paper books. I don't know if there is an easy answer to the difference in format.

good

Any additional comments?

contained a lot of good information; covered a wide range of topics relating to earth history and the history of the universe. actually gave a pretty good treatment of dark matter, as i recall. did not have a lot of unnecessary fluff. good listen.

Great listen

Just a pleasure to listen to. Will listen to again for sure. Just fascinating from a chemistry and geologic and celestial and atmospheric and animal view.

amazingly digestible story of the universe

what a great gift i could not put it away. i learned so much from this book

Great story. Well told.

Would you recommend this audiobook to a friend? If so, why?

A captivating story of how the Earth and our moon have come to be. How this pale blue dot become teeming with life.

What other book might you compare The Story of Earth to and why?

Cosmos, A Universe from Nothing

Which scene was your favorite?

A solar eclipse when the Earth was young and a day lasted five hours and the moon was 10 times the size of the sun in the sky.

Any additional comments?

The reader was Walter Dixon and he does a great job!

THE FATE OF EARTH

There are many theories about the origin and fate of earth. They range from religion to science to science fiction. Robert Hazen’s theory revolves around minerals, time, and Darwinism.

The nature and history of earth suggest yesterday, today, or tomorrow may be the beginning of the end for human life. Hazen suggests, as long as space-ship-earth is humanity’s only safe harbor, human survival is probabilistic.

Fun science about how our planet got here

Squeezing 4.5 billion years into a 10 hour book was quite a feat, but making it interesting to the non scientist (me) was remarkable. From beginning to end the book held my attention and fed me interesting information about the very ground upon which I walk. The science in this book was never dry and I feel I learned a few things despite my enjoying listening to this book.

Talk About Deep Time!

Favorite parts of this book include:

1. The part about abiogenesis and biogenisis and Hazen's theory that Earth's impressive array of mineral diversity is due to the life that it's supported for the past 3.5 billion years.
2. The part about the Great Oxidation Event/Catastrophe.
3. The part about how the moon was formed and how its orbit around Earth used to be much, much closer.

I listened to this audiobook while I was reading Alan Weisman's The World Without Us and watching the NOVA series, The Making of North America. A great triad for learning about geology and deep time and contemplating deep futures.

Irony

He states that the suns output is continually increasing. And yet at the very end says that man is the creator of the climate change that is going on. It did not include the undersea volcanoes that have been warming the oceans in recent years. Otherwise an Informative book.

Weak start strong finish

Great book despite its too-detailed beginning.
I preferred the discussion of life on earth to the focus on rocks.