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Reviews
Your Inner Fish: a Journey into the 3.5-Billion-Year History of the Human Body by Neil Shubin
mcnoble's review
adventurous
informative
slow-paced
4.0
Neil Shubin shares his most profound scientific findings regarding human evolution from fish. With a mix of field stories and science, he makes this book both informative and interesting. I learned so much about human’s evolution while reading this book and would recommend it to people who have more of a science background because it can get a bit dense at times. I read this book in chunks because I occasionally felt it was like reading a textbook. But, overall, I enjoyed it and definitely learned a lot!
nettahk's review against another edition
3.5
Unfortunately reading this did not bring back my missed connection (where are you Liz??). I often didn’t get the significance of various discoveries but I did learn some interesting facts
melissa_who_reads's review
4.0
Readable, and very interesting. Exploring the evolutionary development of life -- from cells to fish to humans, he takes basic anatomy and traces the evolutionary roots of it. Why do our ears function the way we do? How does vision work? Why do we get the diseases we seem to be prone to? How do we relate to the tree of life? Fascinating stuff. Asking questions, seeking answers, with a good smattering of human drama a long the way as researchers work on the questions: Hilde Mangold's dissertation work won a Nobel Prize, but since she died when her gas stove caught fire, her advisor won it. Finding what we have in common with other living creatures is critical to understanding how our bodies work, remedies for the ills we suffer, -- as Shubin says, there are "few things more beautiful or intellectually profound than finding the basis for our humanity ..."
krystalkoski's review
4.0
recently i had been feeling detached from the beauty of scientific discovery simply because i am so involved with it in a day to day aspect. however, shubin does an excellent job of illustrating why evolutionary science is important and just how powerful it is. he writes about the interconnected ness of life pointedly and accurately with an air of profundity that i appreciated. an above average popsci book
hectaizani's review
5.0
Fantastic science writing. Neil Shubin gave us the goods without talking down to his audience. I found it fascinating how paleontologists can study aspects of long dead and fossilized creatures and figure out how they evolved into people.