EVERY LIVING THING: THE GREAT AND DEADLY RACE TO KNOW ALL LIFE

The dramatic globe-spanning and meticulously-researched story of two scientific rivals and their race to survey all life.In the 18th century two men dedicated their lives to the same daunting task: identifying and describing all life on Earth. Their approaches could not have been more different. Carl Linnaeus a pious Swedish doctor with a huckster's flair believed that life belonged in tidy static categories. Georges-Louis de Buffon an aristocratic polymath and keeper of France's royal garden viewed life as a dynamic ever-changing swirl of complexities. Both began believing their work to be difficult but not impossible--how could the planet possibly hold more than a few thousand species? Stunned by life's diversity both fell far short of their goal. But in the process they articulated starkly divergent views on nature on humanity's role in shaping the fate of our planet and on humanity itself.The rivalry between these two unique driven individuals created reverberations that still echo today. Linnaeus with the help of acolyte explorers he called apostles (only half of whom returned alive) gave the world such concepts as mammal primate and homo sapiens--but he also denied species change and promulgated racist pseudo-science. Buffon coined the term reproduction formulated early prototypes of evolution and genetics and argued passionately against prejudice. It was a clash that during their lifetimes Buffon seemed to be winning. But their posthumous fates would take a very different turn.With elegant propulsive prose grounded in more than a decade of research bestselling author Jason Roberts tells an unforgettable true-life tale of intertwined lives and enduring legacies tracing an arc of insight and discovery that extends across three centuries into the present day.