The Universe Within

Discovering the Common History of Rocks, Planets, and People

By: Neil Shubin

Narrated by: Marc Cashman

**Kirkus Best Books of the Year (2013)**

From one of our finest and most popular science writers, and the best-selling author of Your Inner Fish, comes the answer to a scientific mystery as big as the world itself: How are the events that formed our solar system billions of years ago embedded inside each of us?

In Your Inner Fish, Neil Shubin delved into the amazing connections between human bodies—our hands, heads, and jaws—and the structures in fish and worms that lived hundreds of millions of years ago. In The Universe Within, with his trademark clarity and exuberance, Shubin takes an even more expansive approach to the question of why we look the way we do. Starting once again with fossils, he turns his gaze skyward, showing us how the entirety of the universe’s fourteen-billion-year history can be seen in our bodies. As he moves from our very molecular composition (a result of stellar events at the origin of our solar system) through the workings of our eyes, Shubin makes clear how the evolution of the cosmos has profoundly marked our own bodies.

WITH BLACK-AND-WHITE LINE DRAWINGS THROUGHOUT

Shubin Delivers

Fascinating as always. A complex, but simply explained interconnectedness between all of life and this little rock we live on.

Excellent history of earth and humans

History of early Earth and development of life with adaption of human dna changes due to life cycle changes.

Not new, but nicely interwoven disciplines

The joy of this book isn't the science it presents, which must be pretty well known for anyone who has even a passing interest in science. The joy of it is the combination of the knowledge into one large tapestry, making the information feel new and exciting. Bringing in information from physics and astrophysics, plate tectonics, evolutionary biology, genetics, and more the reader moves from the stars to a time when water was the happening place for life, and land was barren, to that great moment 200 million years ago when the birth of the Atlantic allowed for the oxygen necessary for mammalian gestation. If our high schoolers were reading science this fun, we might have more scientists.

Captlve presentation!

content was perfect. for all ages, even me at 90, I listen while walking 2 miles each day.

A guide to awakening the spirituality of science

Where does The Universe Within rank among all the audiobooks you’ve listened to so far?

It would be in the top 10. So many great audio books.

What did you like best about this story?

Fact based, The author took me step-by-step through the mystery, the beauty, the amazing insights of science.

When I finished, I was more grounded than ever and more spiritual as well.

I also felt that I should have spent the last thirty years in science rather than in the study of religion. Here is a religion that works. [Or, here is why so many religions do not work]

Have you listened to any of Marc Cashman’s other performances before? How does this one compare?

I have not listened to Marc before - his voice is pleasing, his pace just right; his words are clear.

Was there a moment in the book that particularly moved you?

Yes, the Howling Monkeys and human color vision - I could see 2.9 million years of my development.

Any additional comments?

Any book that helps me grasp the complexities of evolution, is wanted.