NCSE is pleased to offer a free preview (PDF) of Douglas Palmer's Evolution: The Story of Life (University of California Press, 2009). Included are lavishly illustrated spreads on Darwin's Origin, the pattern of life, the variety of fossils, reconstructing the past, Snowball Earth, sea scorpions and jawless fish, greening the land, the diversification of marine reptiles, and synapsida. The reviewer for Natural History comments, "If time machines were real, this would be the book to carry on nature hikes into the distant past," and Kevin Padian writes, "Palmer's scholarship is up to date and the text passages are highly appropriate. He has a sense for a good story and good science as well. This book is a prodigious effort, not least in the artwork, but also in the assembly of photos and illustrations, and of course the text."