Shubin, who is Provost of the Field Museum and Robert R. Bensley Professor and Associate Dean of Organismal Biology and Anatomy at the University of Chicago, is one of the discoverers of Tiktaalik, the 375-million-year-old fossil believed to be a "missing link" between fish and the first land vertebrates, or tetrapods. The book is a strange brew that combines his professional interests- developmental biology, human and comparative anatomy, molecular biology and paleontology-with a memoir of his career. Nevertheless, it goes down well, leaving the reader thirsty for more.