Becoming Earth (how our planet came to life)

Becoming Earth is a book for the creationists to read, on the real story of how earth came into being, giving also a major shift on how to save our planet.

Earth is a vast interconnected living system that over billions of years, has transformed a lump of orbiting rock into our cosmic oasis, breathing oxygen into our atmosphere and turning rock into fertile soil and creating massive oceans.

This is a book that in the words of Steve Silberman ‘weaves science and history, with the grace of a poet’.

When I was a boy, I thought I could change the weather. On sweltering summer days in suburban California, I would draw a picture of blue rain and march around it on the lawn, splashing it with a potion of hose water and yard trimmings.

As I grew up, so did my understanding of meteorology. I learned how water evaporates from lakes, rivers and oceans.

Rain, I was taught, is an inevitable outcome of atmospheric physics – a gift that we and other creatures passively receive.

And due to long-term atmospheric ripple effects, the Amazon rainforest contributes to rainfall as far away as Canada. A tree growing in Brazil can change the weather in Manitoba.

Ferris Jabr is a contributing writer for The New York Times and Scientific America. He lives in Oregon (US). This is his first book.

This wondrous book reveals our living planet for the miracle that it is. Carla Safina

We tend to take our rare jewel of a home planet for granted. In his startlingly beautiful book, the author shows us exactly why we shouldn’t. Deborah Blum

A science writer with a poet’s soul, Ferris is among the few scribes worthy of serving as biographer for the life-encrusted rock we call home. Ben Goldfarb

There are times reading this book, when you feel like you are peering right down into the very heart of our living planet. It is quite simply, a work of genius. Robert Moor