“Not since Darwin has a writer lifted the science of ecology with insight and delightful illustration” - Richard Dawkins. In this book, a great scientist narrates the grand story of how life evolved on Earth. E.O. Wilson eloquently describes how the world's species became diverse and why the threat to this diversity today is beyond anything we've known in the past. In the extensive new preface of this edition, Professor Wilson discusses the explosion of the conservation biology field and takes a sober look at the work that remains to be done.