The Vital Question by Nick Lane – a game-changing book about the origins of life

Why sex? Why then only two sexes? Why do we age and die? It's the energy, stupid! This thinking is as important as the Copernican revolution

The "Origin of Life" is a conundrum that could once be safely consigned to wistful armchair musing - we'll never know so don't take it too seriously. You will probably imagine that it's still safe to leave the subject in this speculative limbo, without very much in the way of evidence.

You'd be very wrong, because in the last 20 years, and especially the last decade, a powerful new body of evidence has emerged from genomics, geology, biochemistry and molecular biology. Here is the book that presents all this hard evidence and tightly interlocking theory to a wider audience.