Life's Engines: How Microbes Made Earth Habitable (Science Essentials): 24

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What is known about the hidden world of the microbes and their fundamental roles in sustaining planetary habitability is insightfully revealed by Paul Falkowski in this authoritative, comprehensive, and delightful book. Some of the data that are collected include the number of visitors, their source, and the pages they visit anonymously. They surely had their place there, but I think an editor should have requested a change to make it lighter.

There's a reason We Are Legion was named Audible's Best Science Fiction Book of 2016: Its irresistibly irreverent wit! The W12 turned out to be the least powerful engine of the year: its output was 480 hp while others produced 600 to 700 hp. Brabham later stated that the car did not have a functioning tachometer in either of the pre-qualifying sessions, and that the team did not possess a tyre pressure gauge, having to borrow one from the EuroBrun team. When the new season came, the team had one chassis, four engines and spare parts, and a spare chassis. The people of Japan believe that everyone has an ikigai - a reason for being; the thing that gets you out of bed each morning.Getting a slightly deeper biography of Darwin was nice, and I might look for something else on the topic. I found this chapter to be relatively good about describing the mechanism for the endosymbiosis in plain but detailed terms. Smith Chair in Business and Natural Resources at Rutgers University, where he studies how microbes have shaped the history of Earth.

For a subject that can seem a bit dry, Falkowski brings an energy and clarity of thought that is infectious. They make them at the dinner table, or in a meeting room, where personal history, your own unique view of the world, ego, pride, marketing, and odd incentives are scrambled together. He'll step the listener through the steps necessary for creating an oxygen rich atmosphere on earth thus allowing for endosymbiosis (a very specific type of horizontal gene transference) which leads to the development of eukaryotic cells (cells with nucleus). And there was so much more which I had missed entirely: intercellular ion transfer to produce energy, the different chemical reactions involved in photosynthesis, even the Great Oxidation Event, or how the individual bases, or nucleotides, in DNA encode for the different amino acids in proteins. Along the way, they’ll unlock wisdom for those of us navigating our own coupledoms, and for those still seeking their perfect match.With insight and humor, he explains how these miniature engines are built--and how they have been appropriated by and assembled like Lego sets within every creature that walks, swims, or flies. There were times when I liked it and I learned new things about microbes and our relationship with them but then there were times I found the book tedious, boring, and hard to read. Paul Falkowski looks "under the hood" of microbes to find the engines of life, the actual working parts that do the biochemical heavy lifting for every living organism on Earth.