Evolution: Making Sense of Life
Zimmer, Carl and Emlen, Douglas J.
Copyright Year: 2013
ISBN: 9781936221172
Specifications: 800 pages, hardback, printed in four colors
Publication Status: Due August 15, 2012 (in time for fall classes)
Regular Price: $115.00
Special Price: $92.00
Publisher
Regular Price: $115.00
Special Price: $92.00
Publisher
About this Title
Science writer Carl Zimmer and evolutionary biologist Douglas Emlen have teamed up to write a textbook intended for biology majors that will inspire students while delivering a solid foundation in evolutionary biology. Zimmer brings the same story-telling skills he displayed in The Tangled Bank, his 2009 non-majors textbook that the Quarterly Review of Biology called “spectacularly successful.” Emlen, an award-winning evolutionary biologist at the University of Montana, has infused Evolution: Making Sense of Life with the technical rigor and conceptual depth that today’s biology majors require. Students will learn the fundamental concepts of evolutionary theory, such as natural selection, genetic drift, phylogeny, and coevolution. Evolution: Making Sense of Life also drives home the relevance of evolution for disciplines ranging from conservation biology to medicine. With riveting stories about evolutionary biologists at work everywhere from the Arctic to tropical rain forests to hospital wards, the book is a reading adventure designed to grab the imagination of the students, showing them exactly why it is that evolution makes such brilliant sense of life.
About the Authors
The New York Times Book Review calls Carl Zimmer “as fine a science essayist as we have.” Zimmer is the author of ten books, including Parasite Rex, which the Los Angeles Times called “a book capable of changing how we see the world,” and Evolution: The Triumph of an Idea, which Scientific American described as “as fine a book as one will find on the subject.” His 2009 textbook The Tangled Bank: An Introduction to Evolution, was named by Choice as an outstanding academic title of the year. Edward O. Wilson praised the book, saying, “The Tangled Bank is the best written and best illustrated introduction to evolution of the Darwin centennial decade, and also the most conversant with ongoing research. It is excellent for students, the general public, and even other biologists.” In addition to books, Zimmer also writes articles for the New York Times and magazines such as National Geographic, Scientific American, and Discover, where he is a contributing editor. His journalism has earned him numerous awards; he has won the National Academies Science Communication Award, and he is a two-time winner of the American Association for the Advancement of Science Journalism Award. He lectures regularly at universities and museums and is a frequent guest on radio programs such as This American Life, and RadioLab.
Douglas J. Emlen is a professor at the University of Montana, where he conducts research on the evolution of animal development. After earning his Ph.D. at Princeton, he spent three years as a postdoctoral fellow at Duke University before coming to Montana. Emlen’s research has earned him the Presidential Early Career Award in Science and Engineering from the Office of Science and Technology Policy at the White House, multiple research awards from the National Science Foundation, including their five-year CAREER award, and a Young Investigator Prize by the American Society of Naturalists. Emlen’s research has been featured in outlets including The New York Times and National Public Radio’s Fresh Air. His book, Animal Weapons: The Stories Behind Nature's Most Extravagant Structures, will be published by Henry Holt in 2013.
Table of Contents
Chapter 1: The Virus and the Whale: How Scientists Study Evolution
Chapter 2: Biology: From Natural Philosophy to Darwin
Chapter 3: What the Rocks Say: How Geology and Paleontology Reveal the History of Life
Chapter 4: The Tree of Life: How Biologists Use Phylogeny to Reconstruct the Deep Past
Chapter 5: Raw Material: Heritable Variation among Individuals
Chapter 6: The Ways of Change: Drift, and Selection
Chapter 7: Beyond Alleles: Quantitative Genetics and the Evolution of Phenotypes
Chapter 8: Natural Selection: Empirical Studies in the Wild
Chapter 9: The History in Our Genes
Chapter 10: Adaptation: From Genes to Traits
Chapter 11: Sex: Causes and Consequences
Chapter 12: After Conception: The Evolution of Parental Care and Life Histories
Chapter 13: The Origin of Species
Chapter 14: Macroevolution: The Long Run (With Kevin Padian, University of California, Berkeley)
Chapter 15: Intimate Partnership: How Species Adapt to Each Other
Chapter 16: Minds and Microbes: The Evolution of Behavior
Chapter 17: Human Evolution: A New Kind of Ape
Chapter 18: Evolutionary Medicine
Advanced Praise
"I think my students will be genuinely more at ease with their reading assignments and more able to assimilate and retain information from this text. The authors use their expert narrative skills to focus on the big conceptual ideas, which is what matters most in my students’ long-term education." Bronwyn H. Bleakley, Stonehill College SimBio Software
Roberts and Company and SimBio have partnered to bring your students a discount on SimBio Virtual Labs used in conjunction with Evolution: Making Sense of Life. SimBio's suite of virtual labs is the most sophisticated collection of virtual experiments available for teaching evolutionary biology. SimBio Virtual Labs cover the spectrum of evolution topics including natural selection, population genetics, reconstructing evolutionary trees and more. Based on extensive educational research, SimBio's labs address common student misconceptions using open-ended, discovery-driven experiments, and this makes them well-suited to the style of Evolution: Making Sense of Life. Simply mention that Roberts and Company referred you when placing your order and your students can receive a discount on EvoBeaker labs for your class when used along with Evolution. See the following link for all the pricing details.
Class Testing and Reviewing
If you teach a class in evolution and would like to consider using the book for the fall 2012 semester, please contact the editor, Ben Roberts, at bwr@roberts-publishers.com, so that he can send you the galleys in March.
