A complete overview of the last four billion years. Of course it meant that most geologic periods were skipped over in a chapter or less. For example, the Jurassic and Cretaceous, the entire Dinosaur era were rushed through in a single chapter. I knew most of the story already, so there wasn’t much that was new, but it was nice having everything put together in a single easy narrative. It would make a great first book for anyone getting into evolution and geologic time. Poor old Henry Gee did not heed the maxim of never making predictions, especially about the future, and the last chapter is a rather bland speculation the future of evolution. He describes humans dying out after a few more hundred thousand years and a the earth returning to a more “natural” state. He also doesn’t hold much hope for humans populating space. Well we’ll see, or rather our descendants will.