A Short History of Nearly Everything

by Bill Bryson

It is a curious feature of our existence that we come from a planet that is very good at promoting life but even better at extinguishing it.

The average species on Earth lasts for only about four million years, so if you wish to be around for billions of years, you must be as fickle as the atoms that made you. You must be prepared to change everything about yourself—shape, size, colour, species affiliation, everything—and to do so repeatedly. That’s much easier said than done, because the process of change is random.