For centuries, scientists have chased the secrets of how life on our planet arose, how it assumed its dazzling diversity of forms, and how we humans are related to everything else on earth. With increasingly sophisticated genetic methods now bringing us ever closer to answers, leading evolutionary biologist Max Telford takes us inside one of science’s greatest quests. In the intellectually thrilling The Tree of Life, Telford shows how reconstructing the web of relationships between all our planet’s species, from birds and butterflies to mushrooms and moose, allows us to unravel the epic history of life on our planet.

In Telford’s hands, the many-branched evolutionary trees that biologists assemble—from Charles Darwin’s first sketches to the vast computer-generated diagrams scientists are building today—become time machines that take us on a vivid journey through four billion years of life’s history. Far from a dry representation of the dead, the tree of life is a living, shifting thing that constantly alters our perspective on the past, present, and future of life on earth.

For any listener fascinated by evolution and natural history, The Tree of Life is an essential portal to the distant past and a window onto our collective origins.