Search
Log in
  • Home

  • Categories

  • Audiobooks

  • E-books

  • For kids

  • Top lists

  • Help

  • Download app

  • Use campaign code

  • Redeem gift card

  • Try free now
  • Log in
  • Language

    🇳🇱 Nederland

    • NL
    • EN

    🇧🇪 Belgique

    • FR
    • EN

    🇩🇰 Danmark

    • DK
    • EN

    🇩🇪 Deutschland

    • DE
    • EN

    🇪🇸 España

    • ES
    • EN

    🇫🇷 France

    • FR
    • EN

    🇳🇴 Norge

    • NO
    • EN

    🇦🇹 Österreich

    • AT
    • EN

    🇨🇭 Schweiz

    • DE
    • EN

    🇫🇮 Suomi

    • FI
    • EN

    🇸🇪 Sverige

    • SE
    • EN
  1. Books
  2. History
  3. General history

Read and listen for free for 30 days!

Cancel anytime

Try free now
4.1(8)

A (Very) Short History of Life On Earth : 4.6 Billion Years in 12 Chapters

'Exhilaratingly whizzes through billions of years . . . Gee is a marvellously engaging writer, juggling humour, precision, polemic and poetry to enrich his impossibly telescoped account . . . [making] clear sense out of very complex narratives' - The Times

'Henry Gee makes the kaleidoscopically changing canvas of life understandable and exciting. Who will enjoy reading this book? - Everybody!' Jared Diamond, author of Guns, Germs, and Steel

For billions of years, Earth was an inhospitably alien place – covered with churning seas, slowly crafting its landscape by way of incessant volcanic eruptions, the atmosphere in a constant state of chemical flux. And yet, despite facing literally every conceivable setback that living organisms could encounter, life has been extinguished and picked itself up to evolve again. Life has learned and adapted and continued through the billions of years that followed. It has weathered fire and ice. Slimes begat sponges, who through billions of years of complex evolution and adaptation grew a backbone, braved the unknown of pitiless shores, and sought an existence beyond the sea.

From that first foray to the spread of early hominids who later became Homo sapiens, life has persisted, undaunted. A (Very) Short History of Life is an enlightening story of survival, of persistence, illuminating the delicate balance within which life has always existed, and continues to exist today. It is our planet like you’ve never seen it before.

Life teems through Henry Gee’s lyrical prose – colossal supercontinents drift, collide, and coalesce, fashioning the face of the planet as we know it today. Creatures are engagingly personified, from ‘gregarious’ bacteria populating the seas to duelling dinosaurs in the Triassic period to magnificent mammals with the future in their (newly evolved) grasp. Those long extinct, almost alien early life forms are resurrected in evocative detail. Life’s evolutionary steps – from the development of a digestive system to the awe of creatures taking to the skies in flight – are conveyed with an alluring, up-close intimacy.


Author:

  • Henry Gee

Narrator:

  • Henry Gee

Format:

  • Audiobook

Duration:

  • 7 h 48 min

Language:

English

Categories:

  • History
  • General history
  • Natural sciences
  • Physics and chemistry
  • Climate, nature, and animals
  • Nature

More by Henry Gee

Skip the list
  1. Een (zeer) korte geschiedenis van het leven : 4,6 miljard jaar in 12 korte hoofdstukken

    Henry Gee

    book
  2. The Decline and Fall of the Human Empire : Why Our Species is on the Edge of Extinction

    Henry Gee

    audiobook

Others have also read

Skip the list
  1. The War on Alcohol

    Lisa McGirr

    audiobook
  2. Will They Ever Trust Us Again?: Letters From the War Zone

    Michael Moore

    audiobook
  3. Why the West Rules---for Now

    Ian Morris

    audiobook
  4. People vs. Donald Trump : An Inside Account

    Mark Pomerantz

    audiobookbook
  5. The Plague Cycle : The Unending War Between Humanity and Infectious Disease

    Charles Kenny

    audiobookbook
  6. The Year 1000: When Explorers Connected the World—and Globalization Began

    Valerie Hansen

    audiobook
  7. Prohibition

    W. J. Rorabaugh

    audiobook
  8. The Monarchy of England : The Beginnings

    David Starkey

    audiobook
  9. I Speak for the Silent Prisoners of the Soviets

    V. Tchernavin

    book
  10. Americana : omzwervingen in de Amerikaanse cultuur

    Joost Zwagerman

    book
  11. U.S. History For Dummies : 4th Edition

    Steve Wiegand

    audiobook
  12. 1177 B.C. : The Year Civilization Collapsed: Revised and Updated

    Eric H. Cline

    audiobook

Help and contact


About us

  • Our story
  • Career
  • Press
  • Accessibility
  • Partner with us
  • Investor relations
  • Instagram
  • Facebook

Explore

  • Categories
  • Audiobooks
  • E-books
  • Magazines
  • For kids
  • Top lists

Popular categories

  • Crime
  • Biographies and reportage
  • Fiction
  • Feel-good and romance
  • Personal development
  • Children's books
  • True stories
  • Sleep and relaxation

Nextory

Copyright © 2025 Nextory AB

Privacy Policy · Terms ·
Excellent4.3 out of 5