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Every Living Thing: The Great and Deadly Race to Know All Life
PULITZER PRIZE WINNER • An epic, extraordinary account of scientific rivalry and obsession in the quest to survey all of life on Earth
“[An] engaging and thought-provoking book, one focused on the theatrical politics and often deeply troubling science that shape our definitions of life on Earth.”—The New York Times
“A fluent and engaging account of the eighteenth-century origins of Darwinism before Darwin.”—The Wall Street Journal
WINNER OF THE PEN/E.O. WILSON LITERARY SCIENCE WRITING AWARD • A KIRKUS REVIEWS BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR
In the eighteenth century, two men—exact contemporaries and polar opposites—dedicated their lives to the same daunting task: identifying and describing all life on Earth. Carl Linnaeus, a pious Swedish doctor with a huckster’s flair, believed that life belonged in tidy, static categories. Georges-Louis de Buffon, an aristocratic polymath and keeper of France’s royal garden, viewed life as a dynamic swirl of complexities. Each began his task believing it to be difficult but not impossible: How could the planet possibly hold more than a few thousand species—or as many could fit on Noah’s Ark?
Both fell far short of their goal, but in the process they articulated starkly divergent views on nature, the future of the Earth, and humanity itself. Linnaeus gave the world such concepts as mammal, primate, and Homo sapiens, but he also denied that species change and he promulgated racist pseudoscience. Buffon formulated early prototypes of evolution and genetics, warned of global climate change, and argued passionately against prejudice. The clash of their conflicting worldviews continued well after their deaths, as their successors contended for dominance in the emerging science that came to be called biology.
In Every Living Thing, Jason Roberts weaves a sweeping, unforgettable narrative spell, exploring the intertwined lives and legacies of Linnaeus and Buffon—as well as the groundbreaking, often fatal adventures of their acolytes—to trace an arc of insight and discovery that extends across three centuries into the present day.
“[An] engaging and thought-provoking book, one focused on the theatrical politics and often deeply troubling science that shape our definitions of life on Earth.”—The New York Times
“A fluent and engaging account of the eighteenth-century origins of Darwinism before Darwin.”—The Wall Street Journal
WINNER OF THE PEN/E.O. WILSON LITERARY SCIENCE WRITING AWARD • A KIRKUS REVIEWS BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR
In the eighteenth century, two men—exact contemporaries and polar opposites—dedicated their lives to the same daunting task: identifying and describing all life on Earth. Carl Linnaeus, a pious Swedish doctor with a huckster’s flair, believed that life belonged in tidy, static categories. Georges-Louis de Buffon, an aristocratic polymath and keeper of France’s royal garden, viewed life as a dynamic swirl of complexities. Each began his task believing it to be difficult but not impossible: How could the planet possibly hold more than a few thousand species—or as many could fit on Noah’s Ark?
Both fell far short of their goal, but in the process they articulated starkly divergent views on nature, the future of the Earth, and humanity itself. Linnaeus gave the world such concepts as mammal, primate, and Homo sapiens, but he also denied that species change and he promulgated racist pseudoscience. Buffon formulated early prototypes of evolution and genetics, warned of global climate change, and argued passionately against prejudice. The clash of their conflicting worldviews continued well after their deaths, as their successors contended for dominance in the emerging science that came to be called biology.
In Every Living Thing, Jason Roberts weaves a sweeping, unforgettable narrative spell, exploring the intertwined lives and legacies of Linnaeus and Buffon—as well as the groundbreaking, often fatal adventures of their acolytes—to trace an arc of insight and discovery that extends across three centuries into the present day.
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Community Reviews
The Writer Jason Roberts published a history of biological classification entitled Every Living Thing in 2024. The book focuses on the work of two influential natural historians from the 18th century, Carl Linnaeus and George-Louis de Buffon. Roberts writes, “Both Buffon and Linnaeus had been born in 1707. Both devoted themselves to compiling a massive work intended to capture the whole of nature, and neither had succeeded. But there the resemblance ended. Linnaeus was the foremost figure among the school of natural historians known as systematists, who prioritized naming and labeling above all other pursuits. Buffon was the leading practitioner of a more complex approach to nature, a perspective that, appropriately, he saw the need to label. It may best be called complexism” (Roberts 7). Roberts traces the influence of Linnaeus and Buffon on biological classification and, by extension, the field of biology. The term biology was coined by a natural historian named Jean-Baptiste Lamarck, who was influenced by Buffon (Roberts 272). Linnaeus and Buffon have historical sites that can be visited in France, Sweden, and England. Roberts includes a list of places to visit in France, Sweden, and England (Roberts 363-364). In the early 1780s, the widow of Linnaeus sold Linnaeus’s entire collection to a lay English natural scientist named James Edward Smith (Roberts 287-288). The book contains illustrations, a bibliography, and an index. There is a section entitled “notes and sources” included in the book (Roberts 365-388). The book, Every Living Thing, is a well-written history of biological classification and, by extension, the field of biology.
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