This book demonstrates that biology and geochemistry have continually influenced each other in the co-evolution of the Earth and all life.

Bittersweet Destiny combines discourse on the evolution of human behavior with a philosophical perspective. It explores evolutionary theory aimed at determining human behavior. Del Thiessen presents this material against the broad background of everyday life, allowing the reader to see the theory of evolution as it has shaped his or her own behavior. However, he points out that when evolutionary theory is aimed at human behavior, the critics object, and controversy results. Thiessen argues that nothing in our lives makes sense unless we look at it through a biological lens. We can thereby understand our origin, our affiliation with all animals and plants, and our cultural destination. However, we can also discover a dark side to our destiny—our favoritism to those who share our own genes, our ability to deceive, and our capacity for abuse, rape, and murder. Good, bad, and indifferent, we serve the replication of our DNA. Critics extrapolate evolutionary theory to a wide range of animal species, and even human morphology and physiology, but when the same perspective is applied to human behavior there is strong dissent. What these critics fear, according to Thiessen, is that accepting evolutionary notions about human behavior strikes at the heart of free will, self-determination, and social equality. Bittersweet Destiny describes the heroic efforts of naturalists Charles Darwin and Alfred Wallace to unlock the secrets of evolution. It continues with a vivid description of our fossil history and our chance beginnings. From there the story implicates disease processes in evolution, highlights our rational and irrational nature, focuses on those characteristics of brain evolution and language that make us distinctive, and illustrates our most basic survival and reproductive mechanisms. Thiessen warns the reader that things are as they are no matter what we might wish; we ignore facts and controversy at our own risk. This book will be significant to anthropologists, psychologists, biologists, and sociologists.

Rated 24th Best Black Book of 2009 Inside Black Hollywood Magazine From emancipation to segregation to integration, African Americans exist today by virtue of a continuum of political evolutions, each of which is built upon prior legacies and achievements. In advancing our political progression, Sovereign Evolution re-declares freedom and equality in 21st-century terms, using sovereign principles and standards. Whether the issue concerns Katrina and Jena, or being underrepresented in Congress and overrepresented in penitentiaries, the common thread as Ezrah Aharone demonstrates, is that African Americans are an Un-Sovereign People, who pay varying degrees of Un-Sovereign Consequences. Thus, in a very methodical manner, he circumscribes sovereignty in a universal and historical context that confers African Americans with just as much integrity and authority as any other people to espouse and employ sovereign aspirations. The ideological framework herein self-applies and legitimizes the concept of sovereignty in ways that no other work has succinctly captured in politically-relatable terms, specific for African Americans. Realizing that not all African Americans will embrace sovereign values, Aharone uniquely specifies how a Sovereign Evolution can mutually advance the best interests of us all, without conflict or compromise to core beliefs of anyone. Accordingly, the book sets a platform to infuse sovereign discourse into mainstream domains that reach from street corners of the hoods, to Black universities, to church congregations, to the halls of Congress. The advent of President Barack Obama indicates a necessary and long-awaited political shift in time and history, which also conveys veiled implications of our sovereign potentials as a people. What once seemed politically improbable has proven to be politically achievable. Our only political limitations exist within the limits of our vision and courage. To this end, Ezrah Aharone factually sculpts the sociopolitical substance of our historical experience into a sovereign consciousness and political language to initiate a Manifest Destiny from Civil Rights to Sovereign Rights.

A leading evolutionary thinker, biologist, and medical researcher asks the question: "Could life elsewhere be substantially different from life on Earth?"--and builds a step-by-step argument for human inevitability. 65 illustrations and photos.

For the general reader, investigating the surprising connection between stars, our planet and life.