Trees of Life: A Visual History of Evolution Paperback - 2013

From the jacket flap

For the past 450 years, tree-like branching diagrams have been created to show the complex and surprising interrelationships among organisms, both living and fossil, from viruses and bacteria to birds and mammals. This stunning book celebrates the manifest beauty, intrinsic interest, and human ingenuity of these exquisite trees of life.

Theodore W. Pietsch has chosen 230 trees of life dating from the sixteenth century to the present day. His arrangement gives readers a visual sense of the historical development of these diagrams and shows how, in Darwin's words, "from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being, evolved."

With the concept of evolution now often iconified to the point of misrepresentation, Trees of Life reminds us that both the idea and its representation were--and are--fluid, debated, and reconstructed.--Science

Trees of Life is a beautiful book, and the diversity of beautiful images within its pages should be of interest to historians of science, biologists, folks working at the intersection of science and art, and, honestly, anyone with a genuine interest in science and the study of the natural world. This is a taxonomy of trees of life, if you will.--TheDispersal of Darwin

Better than any work before it . . . Anyone interested in the history of phylogenetics and the study of evolutionary relationships should certainly pick up this wonderful book. In a field advancing as quickly as systematic biology, it is nice to look back at the past once in a while.--Systematic Biology

Trees of Life is the sort of book that instantly fascinates . . . This exemplary work is an important contribution to the history of evolution.--Taxon

Looking at the ways images of trees have been used to depict the relationships between organisms over the past five centuries, Pietsch explores how the visual history of these 'trees of life' reveals changing human understandings of evolution.--ISLE: Interdisciplinary Studies in Literature and Environment