Earth and Life

A Four Billion Year Conversation

Andrew H. Knoll

• Publisher: Princeton University Press
• Year: 2026
• Print ISBN:
  9780691283548
  9780691182230
• eBook ISBN:
  9780691287317
• Topic: Physical Sciences
• Subtopic: Biology

From the world-renowned geobiologist and bestselling author of A Brief History of Earth, the epic story of a planetary conversation four billion years in the making

How did the world as we know it—from the soil beneath our feet to the air we breathe and the life that surrounds us—come to be? Geologists have proposed one set of answers while biologists have proposed another. Earth and Life is the first book to reveal why we need to listen to both voices—the physical and the biological—to understand how we and our planet became possible.

In this captivating book, Andrew Knoll traces how all life is sustained by Earth’s geological and atmospheric dynamics, and how life itself shapes the physical environment. Taking readers on a thrilling journey across four billion years of Earth history, he shows how Earth and life interact to cycle the very elements of life from rocks, water, and air, and how these and related processes control our climate, regulate our atmosphere, and support the diversification of life-forms great and small. Along the way, Knoll explains how we can draw on this history as we navigate the challenges of the Anthropocene, and how it can aid our search for life elsewhere in the universe.

Blending cutting-edge science with illuminating insights from a leading expert, Earth and Life explains how this ongoing interplay holds vital lessons for us today as humanity becomes an increasingly major voice in the conversation.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• 1. Discovering the Conversation
• 2. The Nature of the Conversation: Starting with C
• 3. Expanding the Alphabet: N and P
• 4. Completing Life’s Alphabet: S and Trace Elements
• 5. Water and Oxygen
• 6. Trimming the Tree of Life
• 7. Living on a Dynamic Planet
• 8. The Conversation Begins
• 9. The Story of O, Part 1
• 10. The Story of O, Part 2
• 11. The Story of O, Part 3
• 12. The Minerals of Life
• Color Plates
• 13. Plants Enter the Conversation
• 14. Climate and Habitability
• 15. Close Calls?
• 16. The Conversation in the Twenty-First Century
• 17. Other Conversations? Mars
• 18. Other Conversations? Everywhere Else
• Acknowledgments
• References and Further Reading
• Illustration Credits
• Index