Review of 'Introducing Biological Energetics: How Energy and Information Control the Living World'. Norman W. H. Cheetham. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010. 352 pp. ISBN 976-0-19-957593-0 (paperback), $55.95, and ISBN 978-0-19-959371-2 (hardback), $110.

As a textbook, this book requires a reasonably solid input of mental work. The area of mental work required will be influenced by the reader's preexisting mental capital in the fields of geology, physics, and in particular thermodynamics, chemistry including organic chemistry, biology and the basic metabolism of living things, including photosynthesis. The book looks at the evolution of living things, placing this in the context of the basic processes common to them all, and in what is known about the early Earth and the processes that contributed to it becoming suitable for life to emerge. Subtle humor and everyday analogies in many places lighten the learning curve.