1: Introduction: Elixir of Life - and Death
2: In the Beginning there was no Oxygen: The Origins and Importance
of Oxygen
3: Silence of the Aeons: Three Billion Years of Microbial
Evolution
4: Fuse to the Cambrian Explosion: Snowball Earth, Environmental
Change and the First Animals
5: The Bolsover Dragonfly: Oxygen and the Rise of the Giants
6: Treachery in the Air: Oxygen Poisoning and X-Irradiation: A
Mechanism in Common
7: Green Planet: Radiation and the Beginnings of Photosynthesis
8: Looking for LUCA: Last Ancestor in the Age Before Oxygen
9: Portrait of a Paradox: Vitamin C and the Many Faces of an
Antioxidant
10: The Antioxidant Machine: A Hundred and One Ways of Living with
Oxygen
11: Sex and the Art of Bodily Maintenance: Trade-offs in the
Evolution of Ageing
12: Eat! Or You'll Live Forever: The Triangle of Food, Sex, and
Longevity
13: Gender Bender! The Rate of Living and the Need for Sexes
14: Beyond Genes and Destiny: The Double Agent Theory of Ageing and
Disease
15: Life, Death and Oxygen: Lessons From Evolution on the Future of
Ageing
Nick Lane studied biochemistry at Imperial College, University of
London. His doctoral research, at the Royal Free Hospital, was on
oxygen free-radicals and metabolic function in organ transplants.
Dr Lane is Honorary Reader at University College London and
strategic director at Adelphi Medi Cine, a medical multimedia
company based in London, where he is responsible for developing
interactive approaches to medical education. Articles by Nick Lane
have been
published in numerous international journals, including Scientific
American, The Lancet and the British Medical Journal. He lives in
London.
`'. . . popular science writing at its very best - clear yet
challenging, speculative yet rigorous. The book is a tour de force
which orchestrates a seamless story out of both venerable ideas and
very recent discoveries in several disparate fields.''
Bernard Dixon
`'. . . a breathtaking, broad vision of the role of a single gas in
our life, from the origin of organisms, through the emergence of
creatures, and to their deaths . . . packed full of interesting
life-and-death stories...A wonderful read.'
'
Peter Atkins
`'. . . one of the most thought-provoking books I have ever
read.''
John Emsley
`Nick Lane's chapters are dispatches from the frontiers of research
into Earth and life history, but they contain nothing that will
lose the patient reader and much that will reward.'
The Guardian Review
`a brisk revelatory study'
Christopher Hirst, The Independent
`. . . Nick Lane marshals an impressive array of evidence - [an]
ambitious narrative . . . This is science writing at its best.'
Jerome Burne, The Financial Times
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