Evolution : the history of life on earth Russ Hodge ; foreword by Nadia Rosenthal.

Includes bibliographical references (pages 232-242) and index.

World without evolution: Creation, religions, and the age of the Earth -- Astronomy and physics pose major challenges to church doctrines -- Geologists postulate an ancient earth -- "New Geology": Lyell and Darwin -- Problem of fossils -- Jean-Baptiste Lamarck and the transmutation of species -- Erasmus Darwin and the "Living Filament" -- -- Natural theology and "Intelligent design" -- Linnaeus and the classification of life -- Thomas Malthus and the threat of overpopulation -- Building the foundations: Voyages of Darwin and Wallace: Voyage of the Beagle -- Geological discoveries, fossils, and extinctions -- Life in space and time -- Barnacles and experiments -- Alfred Russel Wallace in the Spice Islands -- Theory is made public -- Who really discovered evolution? -- Theory and society's response: Recipe for new species -- Natural selection versus bottlenecks -- Misinterpretations of evolution -- Initial reactions to evolution -- Herbert Spencer and the evolution of society -- Francis Galton and positive eugenics -- Negative eugenics -- Eugenics and the Holocaust -- Evolution in schools and the Scopes "Monkey Trial" -- Synthesis between evolution and genetics: Mendel's work and its rediscovery -- First attempts to link genetics and evolution -- Quest for mutations: Thomas Morgan's fly lab -- Understanding populations through mathematics -- Beginnings of unification / Ronald Fisher and Sewall Wright -- Recipes for isolation / J.B.S. Haldane -- Peppered moths and finches -- Rise of new species / Theodosius Dobzhansky and Ernst Mayr -- Evolution as a game / John Maynard Smith -- "Punctuated equilibrium" / Steven Jay Gould and Niles Eldredge -- Evolution from the gene's point of view / Richard Dawkins -- Evolution of human behavior -- Evolution in the age of DNA: DNA and the molecular basis of evolution -- New theories of the origins of life -- From single cells to multicellular organisms -- Reading human evolution from fossils -- Major eras in the development of plant and animal life -- Fossil DNA -- Evolution in the age of genomes: From the evolution of genes to genomes -- Growing and shrinking genomes -- Phylogeny: Updating the "tree of life" -- Minimal genomes and the last universal common ancestor -- Origins of genetic diseases -- From sequencing organisms to sequencing the world -- Coevolution -- Evolutionary developmental biology -- Evolutionary origins of complex organs -- From genes to forms--understanding nature's toolbox -- Future questions and reflections -- Chronology -- Glossary -- Further resources -- Index.

An exploration of evolution that discusses the work of Charles Darwin and Alfred Russel Wallace, examines how the theory has been received by society, and provides information on DNA, genomes, heredity, sequencing, and other topics.