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Title: Your Inner Fish: A Journey into the 3.5-Billion-Year History of the Human Body
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Manufacturer: Pantheon
List Price: $24.00
Our Price: $13.94
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| Your Inner Fish: A Journey into the 3.5-Billion-Year History of the Human Body by Pantheon Your Inner Fish: A Journey into the 3.5-Billion-Year History of the Human Body | | This is a brief but excellent book explaining how the fossil record is supported via modern science - genetics, DNA sequencing, molecular biology and the like. Although a bit slow in the start, it gives numerous examples of science in the 19th and 20th centuries, scientific progress has both proven and dis-proven scientific theory, and how often full understanding was hampered by lack of tools and technology. This is a must read for anyone interested in evolution, the scientific method (as differentiated from philosophy)and a high-level understanding of the amazing confluence of sciences now available thanks to computing and modern technology. An excellent read! | | Your Inner Fish: A Journey into the 3.5-Billion-Year History of the Human Body by Pantheon Excellent Read | There are many aspects to the body that make us human. Limbs, eyes, stature, genetics. None of it just happened. And this is evident by looking at all those that have come before us. By clearly showing how evolution is decent with modification, Neil Shubin shows how we can better understand the whys and wherefores of our own bodies by looking at the structure of simpler organisms, namely fish. An excelent example (to me) was the examination of the cranial nerves. I remember them from my anatomy class as seemingly tangled and I couldn't understand why they were so random. But by looking at embryology, fish, and many other aspects of comparative vertebrate anatomy, I now understand how beautifully arranged they really are.
Shubin examines many examples like this, showing how the fossil record show evolutionary history, and how many of these conclusions have been drawn in his field. Included are examples of how body plans form, limbs form, teeth end up in the mouth (my 4 year old loved this chapter and insisted I read the whole thing aloud to him), and how the ear is formed.
The book is engaging, entertaining, and informative. The author strikes an excellent balance between not talking over the audiences head and not dumbing down the information. Recommended for anyone interested in evolution, paleontology, body plans, and examining many of the missing links that have been discovered. | | Your Inner Fish: A Journey into the 3.5-Billion-Year History of the Human Body by Pantheon On the physical book itself | The physical condition of this book is great. It is a good looking, well sized hardcover with clear and easy-on-the-eyes print, and the pages themselves have a nice feel and look to them, all in all a great book.
As to what is written within you merely need to look at the other reviews.
Highly recommended. | | Your Inner Fish: A Journey into the 3.5-Billion-Year History of the Human Body by Pantheon What I wish I had learned in high school | | This book could serve as a great supplement to a high school or even college biology course. Despite the title, it focuses more broadly on comparative anatomy and explains where, how, and why much of our body developed the way it did. While some of the basic points I recalled from my high school biology days, they were never explained to me as clearly as Shubin is able to do. His writing makes years of evolutionary history and complex science accessible and fun to read, especially for someone (like me) who only has a short amount of time to read books for relaxation. He also seamlessly integrates various fields of biological science, from paleontology to DNA analysis, to explain his larger point. I only wish I had read this in high school, when I was still deciding which career path to chose. | | Your Inner Fish: A Journey into the 3.5-Billion-Year History of the Human Body by Pantheon Good information, a bit basic | | I am always in search of popular science books that can reach the general public, but still contain information of interest/use to professionals in the field. I find that Shubin's book was great at the former but not so good at the latter. For a more challenging text on this topic, try "Endless Forms Most Beautiful: The New Science Of Evo Devo And The Making Of The Animal Kingdom " by Sean Carroll. | | Your Inner Fish: A Journey into the 3.5-Billion-Year History of the Human Body by Pantheon Product Description | Why do we look the way we do? What does the human hand have in common with the wing of a fly? Are breasts, sweat glands, and scales connected in some way? To better understand the inner workings of our bodies and to trace the origins of many of today's most common diseases, we have to turn to unexpected sources: worms, flies, and even fish.
Neil Shubin, a leading paleontologist and professor of anatomy who discovered Tiktaalik—the "missing link" that made headlines around the world in April 2006—tells the story of evolution by tracing the organs of the human body back millions of years, long before the first creatures walked the earth. By examining fossils and DNA, Shubin shows us that our hands actually resemble fish fins, our head is organized like that of a long-extinct jawless fish, and major parts of our genome look and function like those of worms and bacteria.
Shubin makes us see ourselves and our world in a completely new light. Your Inner Fish is science writing at its finest—enlightening, accessible, and told with irresistible enthusiasm. | | Your Inner Fish: A Journey into the 3.5-Billion-Year History of the Human Body by Pantheon Amazon.com | Oliver Sacks on Your Inner Fish
Since the 1970 publication of Migraine, neurologist Oliver Sacks's unusual and fascinating case histories of "differently brained" people and phenomena--a surgeon with Tourette's syndrome, a community of people born totally colorblind, musical hallucinations, to name a few--have been marked by extraordinary compassion and humanity, focusing on the patient as much as the condition. His books include The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat, Awakenings (which inspired the Oscar-nominated film), and 2007's Musicophilia. He lives in New York City, where he is Professor of Clinical Neurology at Columbia University.
 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. Click on thumbnails for larger images  |  |  | | The crew removing the first Tiktaalik in 2004 | Ted Daeschler and Neil Shubin propecting for new sites (Credit: Andrew Gillis) | The valley where Tiktaalik was discovered (credit: Ted Daeschler, Academy of Natural Sciences) |  |  | | The models of Tiktaalik being constructed for exhibition (Tyler Keillor, University of Chicago) | Me with one of the models (John Weinstein, Field Museum) |
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