From Publishing Perspectives:
At the Royal Society in London this evening (November 29), Nature writer and senior editor Henry Gee has been awarded the £25,000 ( US$29,927) Royal Society Science Book Prize for his A (Very) Short History of Life on Earth: 4.6 Billion Years in 12 Chapters (Pan Macmillan, 2021).
. . . .
The jury chair, neuroscientist Maria Fitzgerald—the daughter of Booker Prize winning novelist Penelope Fitzgerald—in offering the panel’s rationale, said, “This is history like you have never read before.
“Henry Gee takes us on a whirlwind journey through 4.6 billion years through the birth of the planet Earth, the emergence of life, and the evolution of man, a species that is not only aware of itself but also of what will happen next.
“As Gee races through millennia, momentous physical and biological changes are described with immense skill and dynamism combined with almost poetic imagery. The last chapter, ‘The Past of the Future,’ reminds us of our relative insignificance and that each species facing extinction does so in its own way. But ‘do not despair,’ he urges us: ‘The Earth abides, and life is living yet.’”
Link to the rest at Publishing Perspectives
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