David Waltham is an astrobiologist, geophysicist and head of the department of Earth Sciences at Royal Holloway College, the University of London.
"A bold, unwavering argument that pushes back against the too-quick acceptance of Earth as exceptional--and encourages its intelligent life forms to appreciate our supreme luck." --Kirkus Reviews "A lively and well-argued antidote to a widespread view that advanced life could arise frequently and in many places in the known Universe. Waltham explains why the Earth is a much more peculiar planet than you might think, and he shows that its friendliness to life does not just apply to the here-and-now, but must equally have pertained through a history of more than 3.5 billion years: life's survival and prospering to the point where intelligent life could emerge was a product of extraordinary and exceptional luck. A skeptical response to ideas of inevitable evolution of intelligent beings among the stars, Waltham suggests that we may, after all, be lonelier than we could have thought." --Richard Fortey, author of Survivors and The Hidden Landscape "David Waltham takes us on a delightful tour of the various factors that influence planetary habitability and the evolution of advanced life. That he thinks the prospects for it are unlikely is all the more reason for us to go up to space and take a good look!" --James Kasting, Professor of Geosciences, Penn State University, and author of How to Find a Habitable Planet "Waltham has an engaging, pleasantly meandering, style of writing, making his book accessible to the non-specialist. He shows a knack for clearly explaining complex concepts -- for example, geologic time scales and exoplanet detection techniques." --Quest: The History of Spaceflight Quarterly
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