Your Inner Fish

The book begins as a bit of a casual foray into the evolution of man. It really picks up when we get to the aspects of our body we perceive as most important—hands, ears, eyes. I enjoyed reading about how we came to possess these features and when we can learn about ourselves by studying distant relatives (like the fruit fly!).

The book is a strong defense of science research for its own sake. I have my own experiences with abstract mathematics results finding application decades later to analogize. So much “worthless” study of flies, worms, and fossils of ancestors dead an eon has led to wonderful discoveries and improvements in human life. This book is good ammunition for a lay person to prepare for debates with those who rail about research into wombat reproduction and fruit fly digestive tracts.

The book unfortunately ends by shoehorning in jabs at intelligent design. While I am on the same side of the debate as the book, the author could have improved this by either leaving out such talk entirely, or introducing it earlier. It's not really until the final chapter that we get anything about intelligent design, and then it begins really hammering the point. “Our veins make no sense.” “Only an buffoon would have designed us this way.” (My paraphrasings.) From a educational point of view, no harm done. From a readability point of view, this was a little unfortunate.

I recommend it up there with other books like The Trouble with Physics, In Search of Schrödinger's Cat, and A Brief History of Time.