The Evolution of Life is unique in its focus on key principles, offering an accessible, unintimidating treatment of evolutionary biology. With adaptation through natural selection — how the integrated complexity of living organisms comes about — as its central theme, the text adopts a lucid narrative to explain the mechanism of evolution and its main outcomes. Chapters are grouped into six themed parts — basics, history, origins, adaptation, selection, and interaction — and the text is regularly interspersed with descriptive headings that set out a clear path through the subject.