NCSE is pleased to offer a free preview (PDF) of Sean B. Carroll's The Serengeti Rules: The Quest to Discover How Life Works and Why It Matters (Princeton University Press, 2016). The preview consists of chapter 2, "The Economy of Nature," in which Carroll discusses the work of a "young English naturalist [who] went on an expedition ..., encountered an odd assortment of creatures, became gripped by a mystery, had an epiphany (or several) during his adventures, wrote a great book, and founded a new field of science" — not Charles Darwin, but the twentieth-century ecologist Charles Elton.
The reviewer for Publishers Weekly writes, "In this remarkably engaging book, Carroll ... persuasively argues that life at all levels of complexity is self-regulated, from the inner workings of cells to the larger relationships governing the Serengeti ecosystem. ... Carroll superbly animates biological principles while providing important insights." A member of NCSE's Advisory Council and a recipient of NCSE's Friend of Darwin Award, Carroll is vice president for science education at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute and the Allan Wilson Professor of Molecular Biology and Genetics at the University of Wisconsin, Madison.