Life Ascending: The Ten Great Inventions of Evolution
“Life Ascending. Those two books you must read if you don't want to be a luddite.”
Why it is worth your time
Life Ascending is Nick Lane's 2009 book on 10 turning points in evolution: the origin of life, DNA, photosynthesis, the complex cell, sex, movement, sight, warm blood, consciousness and death. Lane is a biochemist at University College London, and the book won the Royal Society prize for science books in 2010. Each chapter asks how the invention could have arisen and what evidence supports the leading explanation. Chamath named it alongside The Vital Question on the December 2022 year-end episode and said anyone who did not want to be a luddite should read both. He uses evolution and energy as frames for how companies and markets develop, and this is the more accessible of the 2 Lane books. It suits general readers who want a structured tour of evolutionary biology. The caveat is age. It was published in 2009, and Lane's own later books, starting with The Vital Question in 2015, update his account of the origin of life.
