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The notion of a living world is one of humanity's oldest beliefs. Though once scorned by many scientists, the concept of Earth as a vast interconnected living system has gained acceptance in recent decades. Life not only adapts to its surroundings – it also shapes them in dramatic and enduring ways. Over billions of years, life transformed a lump of orbiting rock into our cosmic oasis, breathing oxygen into the atmosphere, concocting the modern oceans, and turning rock into fertile soil. Life is intertwined with Earth's capacity to regulate its climate and maintain balance.
Through compelling narrative, evocative descriptions, and lucid explanations, Ferris Jabr shows us how Earth became the world we've known, how it is rapidly becoming a very different world, and how we will determine what kind of Earth our descendants inherit for millennia to come.
Ferris Jabr is a contributing writer for The New York Times magazine and Scientific American. He has also written for The New Yorker, The Atlantic, Harper's, Foreign Policy, National Geographic, Wired, Outside, McSweeney's, and the Los Angeles Review of Books, among other publications. He lives in Portland, Oregon with his husband, Ryan, their dog, Jack, and more plants than they can count. Becoming Earth is his first book.
"This is the book I'd been waiting for. It tells my favorite kind of science story: one that seems at first counter-intuitive, but then quickly becomes obviously true – a story so important and compelling that I am going to be recommending it for years."
– Hank Green, co-host of Vlogbrothers
"Becoming Earth is a glorious paean to our living world, full of achingly beautiful passages, mind-bending conceptual twists, and wonderful characters. Ferris Jabr reveals how Earth not only gave rise to life, and now teems with it, but has also been profoundly, miraculously shaped by it."
– Ed Yong, Pulitzer Prizewinning journalist and author of An Immense World, winner of the Royal Society Science Book Prize
"I did not expect to experience joy when I opened Becoming Earth, but I did, and I do. The ambition, eloquence, and erudition in this dragonfly droneflight of a book are absolutely exhilarating. A rare thing at the best of times, it is especially welcome now, in this dawning age of precarity, when we need, more than ever, to fall back in love with the world [...] Yes, and yes, and yes again!"
– John Vaillant, author of Fire Weather and winner of the Baillie Gifford Prize 2023
"An astonishing book, weaving together science, history, and the author's unfailingly precise observations with the grace of a poet. To read it is to be transformed by a new understanding of our place in what Jabr calls the 'collaborative and improvised performance' that sustains our marvelous home in the Universe."
– Steve Silberman, author of NeuroTribes: The Legacy of Autism and the Future of Neurodiversity, winner of the Baillie Gifford Prize
"'This wondrous book reveals our living planet for the miracle that it is. By the end, you may even feel that 'miracle' is an understatement. The story of Earth is the story of a planet reworked, remade – and, to an astonishing degree, created – by life itself. Wow."
– Carl Safina, author of Beyond Words: What Animals Think and Feel
"Ferris Jabr explores the many ways life has transformed the planet over the last three billion years. In the process, he offers a fresh perspective on today's most urgent challenges. Becoming Earth is fascinating, thought-provoking, and, ultimately, inspiring."
– Elizabeth Kolbert, author of The Sixth Extinction, winner of the Pulitzer Prize for General Non-Fiction
"Gorgeously written and brimming with fascinating science and provocative ideas, Becoming Earth is a book about transformation that is itself transformative. Dive into it and you will come to see our world as Ferris Jabr sees it: a thrumming, breathing entity that doesn't merely harbor life, it is life."
– Dan Fagin, author of Toms River, winner of the Pulitzer Prize for General Non-Fiction
"We tend to take our rare jewel of a home planet for granted. In his startlingly beautiful and insightful book, Becoming Earth, Ferris Jabr shows us exactly why we shouldn't. The Earth lives, breathes, and rewrites our history even as we read, reminding us once again that there is in fact no place like home."
– Deborah Blum, Pulitzer Prizewinning journalist and author of The Poisoners' Handbook and The Poison Squad
"Becoming Earth is a remarkable achievement: a loving homage to our glorious planet that's at once as thematically vast as the ocean, and as precise on the page as a fungal filament. Ferris Jabr, a science writer with a poet's soul, is among the few scribes worthy of serving as biographer for the life-encrusted rock we call home."
– Ben Goldfarb, author of Eager and winner of the PEN/E.O. Wilson Literary Science Writing Award
"Becoming Earth is the rare book that asks us to reexamine our fundamental understanding of the planet. Full of rich and surprising insights, it succeeds magnificently."
– Joshua Foer, author of Moonwalking with Einstein
"As a writer, Jabr is chimerical: he has the sharp eyes of a scientist, the big ears of a journalist, and the liquid-silver tongue of a poet. There are times, reading this paradigm-shifting book, when you will feel like you are peering right down into the very heart of our living planet. It is, quite simply, a work of genius."
– Robert Moor, author of On Trails: An Exploration
"In Becoming Earth, Ferris Jabr exalts life forms as artists of planetary change – microbes become sculptors, yaks are architects, and even forests dance. Jabr is a mesmerizing, even photosynthetic writer in his ability to draw deep meaning from all that he illuminates. I found myself gasping at revelations on every page: clouds heavier than blue whales, windswept plankton that fertilize the Amazon, even the reincarnation of Jabr's own garden. Jabr's writing is as alive as Earth itself, and this book will transform your understanding of our presence, and power, on this planet."
– Sabrina Imbler, author of How Far the Light Reaches
"A masterwork of journalism [...] Popular science writing at its very best"
– Kirkus Reviews, starred review
"Jabr is an exceptional new science writer."
– Jury of the Whiting Foundation Grants for Creative Non-Fiction
