Life on Planet Earth: User's Guide

Cecil Jenkins provides a coherent analysis of the interlocking challenges confronting humans, the younger generation most directly, on this small planet. While firmly backed by research, it is written with humour within a teasing framework and in an easy conversational style. After sketching the cosmic accidents that created the planet, killed off the dinosaurs and made way for the modern human to evolve into ‘the only creature to know that it will die’, Cecil begins with the successive lotteries determining conception, gender, physical appearance and the interplay of Nature and Nurture. This leads directly to the family, with its often-testing dynamics and its birth order stereotypes, which are then viewed in relation to wealth, social class, political change and indeed to the many conflicting religions and ideologies. Having proceeded against this background to examine the changing nature of relationships, both social and intimate, he moves finally to the major challenges now facing our species: the life-or-death question of climate change, the promising yet menacing onset of artificial intelligence, and the mysterious dark matter and energy that reduce our area of understanding to 5% of the universe. After looking at changing views of death, he ends on a note of cautious optimism.