WINNER OF THE PULITZER PRIZE • An epic, extraordinary account of scientific rivalry and obsession in the quest to survey all of life on Earth--a competition “with continued repercussions for Western views of race. [This] vivid double biography is a passionate corrective” ( “[A] vibrant scientific saga . . . at once important, outrageous, enlightening, entertaining, enduring, and still evolving.”--Dava Sobel, author of FINALIST FOR THE PEN/E.O. WILSON LITERARY SCIENCE WRITING AWARD • A In the eighteenth century, two men--exact contemporaries and polar opposites--dedicated their lives to the same daunting task: identifying and describing all life on Earth. Carl Linnaeus, a pious Swedish doctor with a huckster’s flair, believed that life belonged in tidy, static categories. Georges-Louis de Buffon, an aristocratic polymath and keeper of France’s royal garden, viewed life as a dynamic swirl of complexities. Each began his task believing it to be difficult but not impossible: How could the planet possibly hold more than a few thousand species--or as many could fit on Noah’s Ark? Both fell far short of their goal, but in the process they articulated starkly divergent views on nature, the future of the Earth, and humanity itself. Linnaeus gave the world such concepts as In <Every Living Thing,< Jason Roberts weaves a sweeping, unforgettable narrative spell, exploring the intertwined lives and legacies of Linnaeus and Buffon--as well as the groundbreaking, often fatal adventures of their acolytes--to trace an arc of insight and discovery that extends across three centuries into the present day....

Autorentext
Jason Roberts is a Pulitzer Prize–winning writer of fiction and nonfiction. His previous book, A Sense of the World: How a Blind Man Became History’s Greatest Traveler, was a national bestseller and finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award. A contributor to McSweeney’s, The Believer, and other publications, he lives in Northern California.

Klappentext

PULITZER PRIZE WINNER • An epic, extraordinary account of scientific rivalry and obsession in the quest to survey all of life on Earth

**“[An] engaging and thought-provoking book, one focused on the theatrical politics and often deeply troubling science that shape our definitions of life on Earth.”—The New York Times

“A fluent and engaging account of the eighteenth-century origins of Darwinism before Darwin.”—The Wall Street Journal**
**
WINNER OF THE PEN/E.O. WILSON LITERARY SCIENCE WRITING AWARD • A KIRKUS REVIEWS BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR**

In the eighteenth century, two men—exact contemporaries and polar opposites—dedicated their lives to the same daunting task: identifying and describing all life on Earth. Carl Linnaeus, a pious Swedish doctor with a huckster’s flair, believed that life belonged in tidy, static categories. Georges-Louis de Buffon, an aristocratic polymath and keeper of France’s royal garden, viewed life as a dynamic swirl of complexities. Each began his task believing it to be difficult but not impossible: How could the planet possibly hold more than a few thousand species—or as many could fit on Noah’s Ark?

Both fell far short of their goal, but in the process they articulated starkly divergent views on nature, the future of the Earth, and humanity itself. Linnaeus gave the world such concepts as mammal, primate, and Homo sapiens, but he also denied that species change and he promulgated racist pseudoscience. Buffon formulated early prototypes of evolution and genetics, warned of global climate change, and argued passionately against prejudice. The clash of their conflicting worldviews continued well after their deaths, as their successors contended for dominance in the emerging science that came to be called biology.

In Every Living Thing, Jason Roberts weaves a sweeping, unforgettable narrative spell, exploring the intertwined lives and legacies of Linnaeus and Buffon—as well as the groundbreaking, often fatal adventures of their acolytes—to trace an arc of insight and discovery that extends across three centuries into the present day.

Leseprobe
**One

Of the Linden Tree**

the landscape of seventeenth-­century sweden was dotted with natural shrines. These were linden trees, viewed in a semi-­mystical light by Swedes who associated their heart-­shaped leaves and fragrant blossoms with Freyja, the Nordic goddess of love and fertility. Pregnant women visited them to gather leaves, hoping to invoke Freyja s protection during childbirth by sleeping on pillows stuffed with them. Travelers sought shelter under their branches during storms, believing that Thor deferred to Freyja by aiming his lightning strikes elsewhere. Their silver trunks were favored sites for both ­romantic declarations and business negotiations, since Freyja was thought to punish anyone speaking lies beneath their boughs.

One ancient linden tree was especially revered. It grew near the border of the southern Swedish province of Småland, in a field straddling Hvittaryds and Jonsboda parishes, rising in a massive triple trunk to spread a canopy shading most of an acre. Nestled near its roots lay a cairn of piled stones, dating to the Bronze Age and thought to mark the resting place of a Viking warrior. The natives of Småland had long since declared the tree and its grounds a våarträd, a treasured landmark believed to extend its protection to all of the surrounding countryside.

For the family that owned the land, that brought both honor and a special duty of care: Våarträds were customarily left as undisturbed as possible, even when they occupied what would otherwise be productive farmland. For generations the family tended to the tree. When twigs or branches fell, they carefully gathered them up (it was bad luck to break even a single one) and placed them in neat piles atop the roots, leaving them to weather in peace. They erected a perimeter fence to protect the tree from the bunting, rubbing, and ringbarking of grazing animals, but kept a path to the trunk accessible to visitors.

The family had no name. This was common in rural Sweden, where surnames were rarely necessary; one s lifelong presence on ancestral land served as identity enough. Most males, when required to provide one, adopted the simple patronymic of adding -­son to their father s given name, a practice that would eventually populate Sweden with a healthy percentage of Johannsons, Petersons, and Svensons. But in the fall of 1690, a sixteen-­year-­old named Nils made a different choice. Instead of becoming Nils Ingemarsson, he decided to commemorate his family s tree by adopting the surname Linnaeus. It meant man of the linden tree, not in Swedish but in Latin.

The choice betrayed ambition. Nils was leaving to attend the University of Lund, 150 miles away, where Latin was the language of academic discourse. Many professional scholars adopted Latin versions of their surnames, which is why Michel de Nostredame is better known as Nostradamus, and why Nikolaj Kopernik is remembered as Nicolaus Copernicus. Assuming a latinized name in advance was a jarring, presumptuous choice in the province of Småland. But provincial life was what Nils intended to leave behind.

Nils Linnaeus did not stray as far from the linden tree as he had hoped. His family s farming income was enough to send him to the university, but not enough to keep him there. He d arrived with barely the money for a single year s tuition, hoping to fund the rest with a combination of scholarships and part-­time work. When those failed to materialize, he abandoned his education and for most of the next decade wandered through Sweden and neighboring Denmark, establishing himself nowhere and in no prof…