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Book Club surprise--one of the best in my non-fiction list for 2008

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As assigned reading for a book club, Your Inner Fish became for me a page-turning, fascinating read with enough described real-life excitement to generate my own mind-expeditions through the Arctic, voyages to the cliffs of Nova Scotia, and tedious hours in labs carefully excavating fragile fossil from ancient rock. I felt a little like an armchair Indiana Jones. The expedition leader is Professor Neil Shubin, who reads like a humble storyteller sitting around the fire after a hard day negotiating barren rock-strewn hills, wondering apprehensively about the significance of the find. There were times where I imagined my feet were sore and cold from the hard, relentless ground, stiff boots and endless climbing.

Professor Shubin is my age, as I gathered in the epilogue where he describes his experiences as a third grader watching the path of the Apollo 8 command module. His life-journey took him to a path through the museum doors into paleontology, with detours into embryology, evolutionary and cellular biology, and into the teaching career of anatomy and physiology. Along the way, he had the fortune to discover Tiktaalik, the walking fish, a remarkable "missing link" fossil that supported the evolution of amphibians.

As important as that discovery certainly is, I find that the writing does more for me: This book is a story about how exciting scientific endeavors can be. It incorporates the journeys of many great thinkers, and reminds us that we ride on the shoulders of some incredible thinkers and explorers of our past. I think the book could serve as a catalyst of excitement about the power of the scientific method, the importance of persistence and serendipity, and the spirit of adventure that must be the driving force for so many of research scientists who simply want to leave the world a better, more knowledgeable place for having done their lifework. (I would also suggest anything written by Professor Chet Raymo, among favorites of nature/science writers.)

The implications in this book are staggering. This is truly a short but amazingly descriptive primer into many facets of evolutionary biology, from DNA analysis to embryology and comparative anatomy, ultimately to "family trees" and a symbolic and explanatory walk through the local zoo. Having lived through a medical-school education, I found it refreshing. It reminded me about how interesting the questions regarding life can be, and about how, as we grow older, those questions take on new significance and interest, even passion.

And I think that's what Neil Shubin is ultimately: a passionate teacher from whom I gained much by his ongoing life's work. I'm envious of the medical students at the University of Chicago--and wish they had full time, appreciation, energy and opportunity to share this man's enthusiasm. Thanks for a great book club read, and for reminding me what an incredible world we ride upon, and share.

Excellent introduction to paleontolgy and evolution.

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This book was a wonderful introduction to the subjects of evolution and paleontology. Shubin writes this book in a highly readable and exciting manner. One might expect books on these subjects to be somewhat staid, yet Shubing makes them very exciting. You will learn just how to closely related all life forms really are. While humans' relationship to other primates is now obvious, you will see how some of our body parts are simply performing other functions in other species, and how this explains why, for example, eyesight and hearing problems are so often connected. This book makes want to read more on these subjects, and for me rather conclusively dispels "creationism". I also admire the author for being such a polymath. While academics, especially in the sciences, have a reputation for being so pigeonholed that they know nothing, Shubin is a paleontologist, museum administrator, evolutionary scholar, amateur geologist, who also is knowledgeable enough about human anatomy to teach medical students! The only "downside", if you can see as that, is that the author assumes his readers have completed at least some basic college level science courses, but I feel that even those who haven't done those can easily follow this book.

A truly remarkable book

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This is a genuinely remarkable book. The author combines his expertise in paleontology and anatomy with his true gift for clear, stylish writing to produce the best book about the evolution of humans that you're likely to find. The book traces all of our major "subsystems"-- hearing, vision, skeletal form, internal organs, skin, etc.-- back as far as possible, sometimes to the single-celled creatures who appeared at the beginning of life on earth. At the same time, he describes the latest research into DNA, which supports all of the paleontological evidence he details.

His point is that only by "embracing our inner fish" can we understand our place in the elaborate fabric of life. There is nothing at all random about evolution; everything has an origin somewhere and will no doubt be the predecessor of some later development. He writes strictly from a scientific point of view. You will find not a word about the current evolution vs. intelligent design controversy.

As I read, I was increasingly impressed by the author's economical style. That is, he is so clear and precise that he can very thoroughly discuss millions of years of evolutionary developments in just 200 pages, doing so comprehensively enough that nothing important is left out. Finally, his style makes the book just plain fun to read. There are not many authors who can do all of those things simultaneously.

I thoroughly enjoyed reading this book, and I recommend it most highly.

Our Evolutionary Branch, Demystified

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Neil Shubin, an evolutionary biologist who works as Provost of the Field Museum of Natural History in Chicago, clearly chose the right career. In Your Inner Fish: A Journey into the 3.5 Billion-Year History of the Human Body, Shubin traces the history of our anatomy with a passion that leaps off the page. His conversational writing style, coupled with animated anecdotes and crisp descriptions, energized my reading so that two hundred pages seemed more like twenty.

The title of the book, Your Inner Fish, refers to the evolutionary history we humans share with other animals. Shubin, who also acts as Professor of Anatomy and Associate Dean at the University of Chicago, opens with the tale of how he co-discovered Tiktaalik roseae, sometimes called the "fish that crawled out of the water," in the Canadian Arctic in 2006. This groundbreaking find provides compelling evidence of an intermediate stage between fish and early limbed animals, and serves as an illustration of the "history of life within us," one example among many that Shubin highlights.

Of course, Charles Darwin predicted that transitional forms would illustrate a gradual evolutionary shift between two distinct groups, and Tiktaalik fits the bill. Like most fish, Tiktaalik possessed gills, scales, and webbed fins. Yet, it also sported innovations like wrists, lungs, and a mobile neck, and it denotes the earliest creature to possess all the bones of our arm, wrist, and palm. Previous to Tiktaalik, fish did not exhibit these joints. Thus, this creature laid the stepping-stones for later vertebrates to transition onto dry land.

The author tells us why we should care about this: "Virtually every illness we suffer has some historical component. ... [D]ifferent branches of the tree of life inside us - from ancient humans, to amphibians and fish, and finally to microbes - come back to pester us today ... show[ing] that we were not designed rationally, but are products of a convoluted history."

He pinpoints the evolutionary history of our senses of smell, sight, and hearing, as well as that of our wrists, teeth, jaws, and skull, and he explains such common ailments as hiccups, hernias, and sleep apnea.

In a poignant passage about dissecting the human hand, Shubin recalls his personal introduction as a student to human anatomy. After spending months dissecting internal organs, he felt detached about the task before him. Seeing the hand jolted him back to reality: "[s]uddenly this mechanical exercise, dissection, became deeply and emotionally personal." Similarly, when he examined Tiktaalik's modified fin for the first time, he felt that he had "uncovered a deep connection between my humanity and [that of] another being," which is the whole premise of his book.

Your Inner Fish provides a fascinating overview of the history of our own evolution, an introduction that is both readable and inviting. I suppose the simple explanations and introductory tone Shubin uses might give more well-read students seeking in-depth analysis or discussion, reason to criticize, but for a non-scientist reader such as myself, Shubin strikes the right note for piquing my interest further. And simply by asking what evolution from our animal ancestors really means for us, Shubin makes the book personally relevant in a modern context.

Shubin concludes with an inspiring message: "I can imagine few things more beautiful or intellectually profound than finding the basis for our humanity, and remedies for many of the ills we suffer, nestled inside some of the most humble creatures that ever lived on our planet."

Roxanne Enman

Interesting read, aimed at a general audience

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This is a good, informative book, aimed at an introductory audience. Shubin is a true renaissance-man, and he brings all facets of his expertise to bear on showing how all of us have ancestors in common with fish. The book is a fun read very accessible, and a highly recommended part of a laymen's library.