Evolution

Unprecedented in its approach, the number and diversity of the species presented, and the quality of the photographs, Evolution is the book on how we came to be what we are. Spectacular, mysterious, elegant, or grotesque, the skeletons of the vertebrates that inhabit the earth today carry within them the imprint of an evolutionary process that has lasted several billion years. This book is the result of a dual approach, scientific as well as aesthetic, rigorous yet accessible. Each chapter is made up of a short text that illuminates one theme of the evolutionary process-repetition, adaptation, polymorphism, sexual selection-and a series of exquisitely composed photographs of skeletons against a black background. Approximately three hundred photographs of whole skeletons or details have been made possible by the French National Museum of Natural History. The reader learns, by experiencing each text and photograph together, how the structure of every creature has been shaped by its environmental and genetic inheritance.

Author Jean-Baptiste de Panafieu, a professor of natural sciences and a doctor of biological oceanography, has published a number of popular scientific works for younger readers and written and directed documentaries.

Photographer Patrick Gries has photographed over two thousand artworks for the new Quai Branly Museum and collaborated with the Cartier Foundation for Contemporary Art, among other recent projects.

Linda Asher, a former fiction editor for The New Yorker, has translated into English Victor Hugo, Georges Simenon, and Milan Kundera. Her translation of Martin Winckler's The Case of Dr. Sachs (La maladie de Sachs) won the French-American FoundationTranslation Prize in 2000.