Stories that both dazzle and edify… This book is not just about life but about discovery
itself. It is about error and hubris but also about wonder and the reach of science.
-Siddhartha Mukherjee New York Times Book Review We all assume we know what life is but the
more scientists learn about the living world-from protocells to brains from zygotes to
pandemic viruses-the harder they find it is to locate life's edge. Carl Zimmer investigates one
of the biggest questions of all: What is life? The answer seems obvious until you try to
seriously answer it. Is the apple sitting on your kitchen counter alive or is only the apple
tree it came from deserving of the word? If we can't answer that question here on earth how
will we know when and if we discover alien life on other worlds? The question hangs over some
of society's most charged conflicts-whether a fertilized egg is a living person for example
and when we ought to declare a person legally dead. Life's Edge is an utterly fascinating
investigation that no one but one of the most celebrated science writers of our generation
could craft. Zimmer journeys through the strange experiments that have attempted to re-create
life. Literally hundreds of definitions of what that should look like now exist but none has
yet emerged as an obvious winner. Lists of what living things have in common do not add up to a
theory of life. It's never clear why some items on the list are essential and others not.
Coronaviruses have altered the course of history and yet many scientists maintain they are not
alive. Chemists are creating droplets that can swarm sense their environment and multiply.
Have they made life in the lab? Whether he is handling pythons in Alabama or searching for
hibernating bats in the Adirondacks Zimmer revels in astounding examples of life at its most
bizarre. He tries his own hand at evolving life in a test tube with unnerving results. Charting
the obsession with Dr. Frankenstein's monster and how Coleridge came to believe the whole
universe was alive Zimmer leads us all the way into the labs and minds of researchers working
on engineering life from the ground up.
