The Story of CO2 Is the Story of Everything

A moving and magisterial tribute to the magic-seeming chemical interplay of air and rock, plant kingdom and ocean expanse, which scientists dryly call the ‘carbon cycle.’ Upon it, Brannen shows, absolutely all life rests—with growing, and unnerving, precarity

David Wallace-Wells, New York Times bestselling author of The Uninhabitable Earth

Urgent and astounding … Brannen weaves together the entire history of Earth, and the origins and tribulations of life over billions of years, with the predicament we find ourselves in today … Brannen is in a class of his own

Steve Brusatte, Sunday Times bestselling author of The Rise and Fall of the Dinosaurs

What a brilliant and epic book this is! I study this stuff for a living and still learned so much—how coal nearly froze the planet, why the rocks beneath our feet allow us to breathe, and the origins of our modern industrial world

Kate Marvel, author of Human Nature

As with everything Peter Brannen writes, this is fascinating; deep history brought vividly to life. But it's also crucial--our ability to understand and act on it will determine how the next period in earth's history unfolds

Bill McKibben, author Here Comes the Sun

A completely new vision of Earth and human history that will change your perspective forever

Rebecca Boyle, author of Our Moon

A grand tour of billions of years of history … Brannen elegantly moves through the Earth’s epochs

Daily Mail

An engaging story of the entire history of our planet … Brannen deftly weaves his narrative, bringing to life the story of Co2 and its importance to all life forms …. Worlds practically unimaginable to the reader because of their remoteness are vividly described … This book regularly evokes a kind of child-like wonder – and does so for a subject that is so completely woven into our everyday life that we take it for granted

New Scientist

This is history on a heroic scale … Brannen has a gift for translating recondite scientific facts into gorgeous psychedelic passages that verge on pure poetry

The Times

This ambitious, absorbing book begins with the origins of life and stretches through the rise of human civilization and technology … While Brannen doesn’t shy away from the fearsome shape of our future, he finds ample joy in this deep-time journey, unafraid to puncture his expertise with gob-smacked wonder … Brannen is a mind vividly alive on the page [and] his arguments, like his writing, are compelling

New York Times