Search type Keyword Keyword Inventory DVD Books Music Electronics Video Games Kitchen Software PC Hardware Pet Supplies Apparel Toys All

You have no items in your shopping cart

Relics of Eden: The Powerful Evidence of Evolution in Human DNA Prometheus Books $26.98 Evolution: What the Fossils Say and Why It Matters Columbia University Press $29.50 The Making of the Fittest: DNA and the Ultimate Forensic Record of Evolution W. W. Norton $16.95 The Oxford Book of Modern Science Writing Oxford University Press, USA $34.95 Only a Theory: Evolution and the Battle for America's Soul Viking Adult $25.95 Irreligion: A Mathematician Explains Why the Arguments for God Just Don't Add Up Hill and Wang $20.00

Your Inner Fish: A Journey into the 3.5-Billion-Year History of the Human Body by Neil Shubin List Price: $24.00 Price: $16.32 & eligible for FREE Super Saver Shipping on orders over $25. You Save: $7.68 (32%)

Your Inner Fish is my favorite sort of book--an intelligent, exhilarating, and compelling scientific adventure story, one which will change forever how you understand what it means to be human.

The field of evolutionary biology is just beginning an exciting new age of discovery, and Neil Shubin's research expeditions around the world have redefined the way we now look at the origins of mammals, frogs, crocodiles, tetrapods, and sarcopterygian fish--and thus the way we look at the descent of humankind. One of Shubin's groundbreaking discoveries, only a year and a half ago, was the unearthing of a fish with elbows and a neck, a long-sought evolutionary "missing link" between creatures of the sea and land-dwellers.

My own mother was a surgeon and a comparative anatomist, and she drummed it into me, and into all of her students, that our own anatomy is unintelligible without a knowledge of its evolutionary origins and precursors. The human body becomes infinitely fascinating with such knowledge, which Shubin provides here with grace and clarity. Your Inner Fish shows us how, like the fish with elbows, we carry the whole history of evolution within our own bodies, and how the human genome links us with the rest of life on earth.

Shubin is not only a distinguished scientist, but a wonderfully lucid and elegant writer; he is an irrepressibly enthusiastic teacher whose humor and intelligence and spellbinding narrative make this book an absolute delight. Your Inner Fish is not only a great read; it marks the debut of a science writer of the first rank.

(Photo © Elena Seibert)

A Note from Author Neil Shubin

This book grew out of an extraordinary circumstance in my life. On account of faculty departures, I ended up directing the human anatomy course at the University of Chicago medical school. Anatomy is the course during which nervous first-year medical students dissect human cadavers while learning the names and organization of most of the organs, holes, nerves, and vessels in the body. This is their grand entrance to the world of medicine, a formative experience on their path to becoming physicians. At first glance, you couldn't have imagined a worse candidate for the job of training the next generation of doctors: I'm a fish paleontologist.

It turns out that being a paleontologist is a huge advantage in teaching human anatomy. Why? The best roadmaps to human bodies lie in the bodies of other animals. The simplest way to teach students the nerves in the human head is to show them the state of affairs in sharks. The easiest roadmap to their limbs lies in fish. Reptiles are a real help with the structure of the brain. The reason is that the bodies of these creatures are simpler versions of ours.

During the summer of my second year leading the course, working in the Arctic, my colleagues and I discovered fossil fish that gave us powerful new insights into the invasion of land by fish over 375 million years ago. That discovery and my foray into teaching human anatomy led me to a profound connection. That connection became this book.

Customer Reviews:
Ayurveda, Science, and History	Customer Rating: 5 out of 5
Reading this book reminded me of the new book by Frank John Ninivaggi, MD at Yale. Ayurveda: A Comprehensive Guide To Traditional Indian Medicine for the West says similar things. It broadens one's views on health, evolution, our biological selves, and ecological intimacy with nature. Two highly intelligent scientists give us a look into reality, with reference to its possible meaning for humankind. Wow! how great is the human mind!!
Could have used an Inner Editor	Customer Rating: 3 out of 5
I should confess up front that my not loving this book is partly my own fault. Given Shubin's academic pedigree -- and it is impressive -- I expected the work to be more substantive. That he decided to write for a more general audience is not so much a problem as a simple disappointment. But that's only part of my issue with the book. Simply put, it's poorly written. While literary style is not the forte of the majority of scientists, you'd expect them to have at least relied on a competent editor. Most offensive of all was his labored redundancy; important sentences were deemed so important that they were sometimes used -- essentially verbatim -- multiple times; if a point could be made in a short paragraph, Shubin used three. Still, he has some interesting stories to tell, and while their connections to broader concepts are sometimes forced in rather painful transitions, the episode and ideas should hold the attention of most general readers.
What a great book	Customer Rating: 5 out of 5
I personally feel that this should be required reading for every biology or anatomy and physiology class in the country. I read the book over the summer and have been looking for ways to work it into my science class. It is a lucid explanation of why the human body is such a wonder and at times such a Rube Goldberg device. It all makes perfect sense in an evolutionary light. The author's opening chapters are enlightening in his explanation of the predictive power of the Theory of Evolution and how it has been tested repeatedly and supported by the evidence. I am very happy to see so many other teachers finding and utilizing this book with their classes.
There Really is Nothing (Entirely) New	Customer Rating: 4 out of 5
This is a somewhat breezy overview of the deep links between humans and all other animals that have lived on earth, including not merely fish but worms, jellyfish and even the earliest one-celled creatures. Choosing different aspects of the human body (e. g. hands, heads, sense of smell, hearing, vision etc) Shubin describes how they developed from features present in ancient forms. The earlier forms often served quite different functions but were modified over eons of time in ways quite traceable through the fossil record or DNA. Indeed one of Shubin's main points is that the ancient forms were not replaced but were virtually endlessly modified over time to assume and support (often awkwardly) new functions and support different ways of life. The bodies of living animals (including humans) are thus in many respects Rube Goldberg devices, jury rigged amalgams of various parts, many of which originally served far different purposes. Shubin writes clearly and with obvious enthusiasm for his subject. The book is short and is an overview intended for a general audience. It does not presume any scientific background nor does it present detailed argument or evidence for its positions. It is not aimed at those who are familiar with the field. There is a subtext against intelligent design, but this position is never explicitly articulated much less argued. It is present only in the implications that follow from Shubin pointing out how many of the modern forms fit their current functions clumsily. The drawings in the book, unfortunately, are only sometimes helpful. The book also has fairly extensive suggestions for further reading. Overall a very good, and very basic, work of popular biology.
Excellent primer on evolutionary processes	Customer Rating: 5 out of 5
In terms of physical makeup, how did human beings get to be what they are? In order to provide some answers, the author's journey of discovery took him to a remote site in the Arctic to look for fossils. This site fit the requirements of containing exposed sedimentary rocks dating back some 370 million years ago, to the time when previously found fossils begin to show terrestrial rather than purely aquatic adaptations. With a combination of luck and skill, he succeeded in finding what he was looking for: the fossil remains of a creature that had the anatomy not quite of a fish but not quite of a land animal either. From that starting point, the author provides anatomical examples of how human adaptations - everything from limbs to teeth to the inner ear - can be seen to have evolved from much simpler organisms. The study of fossils and anatomy does have its limitations in that only gross similarities can be noted; the process itself is hidden; and there is not much that can be done experimentally. But the subject matter can be approached from a different angle. The author recounts initial experimental methods in embryology that found an "organizer" site of cells that appears to control growth in embryos. When these types of cells of one species were substituted for another, they still enacted their role of organizing. Significant progress since the 1980s in genetics, especially the discovery of the Hox gene, has unlocked the role of DNA in explaining how the "organizer" works. Scientists can then search out the similarities of DNA in different species. The author combines his knowledge of paleontology and anatomy with genetics and molecular biology to posit how single celled organisms could have developed the means to combine together over time to the point of developing bodies. The details here are rather sketchy - as this book is a primer not a technical work. The study is limited to a discussion of how certain anatomical structures developed as life became more complex. It is interesting to consider the external circumstances that were at work. The primary motivation for assuming more complexity appears to be the desire to evade predators. The first appearance of bodies appears to have coincided with a noticeable increase in oxygen in the earth's atmosphere. One note: This book is about science not religion, but I could not help but being struck by an analogy the author draws between developing life and the construction of a building: the role of DNA in the cells of a body is analogous to there being a blueprint of a building in every brick. In other words, instead of the plans coming from the outside, life develops from plans from within. On the basis of this insight, it should be fair to say that intelligence has to be inside rather than outside; that is, the Intelligent Designer is not separate and apart from all of Creation.