The vital question : why is life the way it is?-致命问题:为什么生活是这样的

作者：Nick Lane

书名：The vital question : why is life the way it is?《致命问题:为什么生活是这样的》 

中文简介：The vital question : why is life the way it is?《致命问题:为什么生活是这样的》这本书不是仅仅关乎理论。尼克试图更正一个科学误区，让人们充分认识到能量在一切有生命事物中扮演的角色。他主张，我们只有理解了能量是如何运作的才能理解生命的起源及生命是如何变复杂的过程。

英文简介：Why is life the way it is? Bacteria evolved into complex life just once in four billion years of life on earth-and all complex life shares many strange properties, from sex to ageing and death. If life evolved on other planets, would it be the same or completely different?

In The Vital Question, Nick Lane radically reframes evolutionary history, putting forward a cogent solution to conundrums that have troubled scientists for decades. The answer, he argues, lies in energy: how all life on Earth lives off a voltage with the strength of a bolt of lightning. In unravelling these scientific enigmas, making sense of life's quirks, Lane's explanation provides a solution to life's vital questions: why are we as we are, and why are we here at all?

This is ground-breaking science in an accessible form, in the tradition of Charles Darwin's The Origin of Species, Richard Dawkins' The Selfish Gene, and Jared Diamond's Guns, Germs and Steel.