The Medusa and the Snail: More Notes of a Biology Watcher

 

The Medusa and the Snail: More Notes of a Biology Watcher  by Lewis Thomas

The medusa is a tiny jellyfish that lives on the ventral surface of a sea slug found in the Bay of Naples. Readers will find themselves caught up in the fate of the medusa and the snail as a metaphor for eternal issues of life and death as Lewis Thomas further extends the exploration of man and his world begun in The Lives of a Cell. Among the treasures in this magnificent book are essays on the human genius for making mistakes, on disease and natural death, on cloning, on warts, and on Montaigne, as well as an assessment of medical science and health care. In these essays and others, Thomas once again conveys his observations of the scientific world in prose marked by wonder and wit.

 Your Inner Fish by N. Shubin

https://www.amazon.com/Your-Inner-Fish-Journey-3-5-Billion-Year/dp/0307277453/ref=sr_1_1?crid=1WZNPGODE3L5M&dchild=1&keywords=your+inner+fish+by+neil+shubin&qid=1598560140&sprefix=inner+fish%2Caps%2C217&sr=8-1

Neil Shubin, the paleontologist and professor of anatomy who co-discovered Tiktaalik, the “fish with hands,” tells the story of our bodies as you've never heard it before. The basis for the PBS series.

By examining fossils and DNA, he shows us that our hands actually resemble fish fins, our heads are organized like long-extinct jawless fish, and major parts of our genomes look and function like those of worms and bacteria. Your Inner Fish makes us look at ourselves and our world in an illuminating new light. This is science writing at its finest—enlightening, accessible and told with irresistible enthusiasm.

Microcosmos : four billion years of evolution from our microbial ancestors; Margulis and Sagan

 

By L/ Margulis and D. Sagan

Published in 1986, a landmark explication of the ideas of symbiosis in evolution. Can be accessed free online at the Internet Archive.

Excellent narrative, lots of detail, and many insights.