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Re:What a Newfound Kingdom Means for the Tree of Life by kashyapc on Wednesday December 19, 2018 @03:24AM (#18714115)
A small digression on Nick Lane's book: I gifted myself The Vital Question in 2015 December. While Lane writes quite effectively without any mind-numbing jargon, the book still has quite a bit of technical chemistry (understandably). After the excellent first 80 pages, it took me a lot more will power to plough through. :-) (I paused at page 112 and never got back. Thanks to this reminder, I'll resume again.)

When I was reading the book on a plane, a seasoned biologist happened to be sitting next to me. When I said that it's the first book of Nick Lane that I picked up, he said: "I'd rather suggest you to pick up Laine's other book, Life Ascending, and then get back to The Vital Question."

(Edit: Oops, bad me, just noticed that there's already discussion about the book's accessibility in this thread.)

Re:What a Newfound Kingdom Means for the Tree of Life by burning_hamster on Wednesday December 19, 2018 @08:15AM (#18715348)
> pick up Laine's other book, Life Ascending, and then get back to The Vital Question

As an ex-biochemist who has read both books, this is excellent advice.