Robert M. Hazen

Four billion years ago, the infant Earth was a seething cauldron of erupting volcanoes, raining meteors, and hot noxious gases, totally devoid of life....

Science ranges from the study of the universe itself to the smallest particles of matter contained within it - and everything in between....

An enchanting biography of the most resonant - and most necessary - chemical element on Earth. Carbon. It's in the fibers in your hair, the timbers in your walls, the food that you eat, and the air that you breathe. It's worth billions as a luxury and half a trillion as a necessity....

Of the codified laws of nature, only one inscribes a direction to time: the dreaded second law of thermodynamics, which declares that the disorder of a closed system tends to increase as time passes. New shoes eventually scuff, our bodies weaken and die.

This course chronicles the history of Earth and life on Earth from the point of view of the minerals that made it all happen....

A science book for the general reader that is informative enough to be a popular textbook and yet well-written enough to appeal to general readers. “Hazen and Trefil [are] unpretentious—good, down-to-earth, we-can-explain-anything science teachers, the kind you wish you had but never did...