Books by Author Robert M. Hazen

Robert M. Hazen, James Trefil, 2009

Each chapter of this science best-seller describes a “great idea of science”—atoms, plate tectonics, the laws of energy, evolution, and more. The New York Times Book Review called Hazen and Trefil “unpretentious—good, down-to-earth, we-can-explain-anything science teachers, the kind you wish you had but never did.”

Robert M. Hazen, 2013

Hailed by The New York Times for writing “with wonderful clarity about science . . . that effortlessly teaches as it zips along,” nationally bestselling author Robert M. Hazen offers a radical new approach to Earth history in this intertwined tale of the planet’s living and nonliving spheres. With an astrobiologist’s imagination, a historian’s perspective, and a naturalist’s eye, Hazen calls upon twenty-first-century discoveries that have revolutionized geology and enabled scientists to envision Earth’s many iterations in vivid detail—from the mile-high lava tides of its infancy to the early organisms responsible for more than two-thirds of the mineral varieties beneath our feet.

Robert M. Hazen, 2005

Life on Earth arose nearly 4 billion years ago, bursting forth from air, water, and rock. Though the process obeyed all the rules of chemistry and physics, the details of that original event pose as deep a mystery as any facing science. How did non-living chemicals become alive? While the question is (deceivingly) simple, the answers are unquestionably complex.