Is Earth Exceptional?: The Quest for Cosmic Life

by Mario Livio, Jack Szostak

A New York Times–bestselling astrophysicist and a Nobel laureate describe the quest to discover how and where the universe breathed life into matter  For a long time, scientists have wondered how life has emerged from inanimate chemistry, and whether Earth is the only place where it exists. Charles Darwin speculated about life on Earth beginning in a warm little pond. Some of his contemporaries believed that life existed on Mars. It once seemed inevitable that the truth would be known by now.    It is not. For more than a century, the origins and extent of life have remained shrouded in mystery. But, as Mario Livio and Jack Szostak reveal in Is Earth Exceptional?, the veil is finally lifting. The authors describe how life’s building blocks—from RNA to amino acids and cells—could have emerged from the chaos of Earth’s early existence. They then apply the knowledge gathered from cutting-edge research across the sciences to the search for life in the both life as we know it and life as we don’t.    Why and where life exists are two of the biggest unsolved problems in science. Is Earth Exceptional? is the ultimate exploration of the question of whether life is a freak accident or a chemical imperative. 

Genres: Science, Nonfiction, Biology, Astronomy, Space, Physics

336 pages, Hardcover

Published September 10, 2024

Reviews

[Cav · Rating 2 out of 5]

"Somewhat paradoxically, when it comes to the phenomenon of biological life on Earth, we are quite certain about how Mother Nature will ultimately end it, in the distant future, but we don’t know how exactly it started..."

The question of whether or not we are alone in the universe has captivated mankind since time immemorial. So, Is Earth Exceptional? had some great raw material to work with. Unfortunately, however, the writing here bored me to tears... More below.

Author Mario Livio is an astrophysicist and a writer of works that popularize science and mathematics. For 24 years he was an astrophysicist at the Space Telescope Science Institute, which operates the Hubble Space Telescope.

Mario Livio:



I love reading about the search for potential extraterrestrial life and its related discussions. Unfortunately, the finished presentation here just did not meet my expectations.

In my experience, the science books I've read can be divided into 2 broad categories. The first is where the technical material is made accessible to the layperson by capturing their attention and imagination through engaging writing, with an emphasis on telling a story. The author speaks in a clear and concise fashion, ensuring the reader never loses the plot. The other category sees the author take a deep breath at the start of the book, assume a level of scientific literacy in their audience that likely is not there, and then unload a virtually never-ending torrent of long-winded dry writing; complete with copius amounts of related jargon and minutia throughout. Unfortunately, this book was an example of the latter and not the former...

The book opens with a lackluster and low-energy intro that proved to be a harbinger for the rest of the writing to follow. The author drops the quote at the start of this review, and it continues:

"...The natural (not caused by self-destructive actions of our currently dominant species) termination of life as we know it will be dictated by relatively well-understood and predictable astrophysical and atmospheric processes (unless unforeseeable cosmic events, such as an asteroid impact or a nearby gamma-ray burst, act to bring about a premature end).
We know, for instance, that in approximately five billion years, as our Sun expands tremendously to become a red giant star, Earth will be scorched, and may even be engulfed by the Sun’s expanding envelope.
Complex multicellular life will become extinct much earlier, about a billion years hence, as Earth’s biosphere perilously declines due to the rising temperatures associated with the late stages in the Sun’s evolution.
The origin of life, on the other hand, is still veiled in mystery. While enormous progress has been achieved in understanding the building blocks of biology, we still don’t know what precisely it was that caused life to spontaneously emerge, or how the very first cells suddenly came into existence."

Further to what I wrote above, the title of the book had me thinking that it was going to be primarily focused on astronomy and the current search for extraterrestrial life. While that is briefly covered here, the book is almost entirely focused on biochemistry. It is a long-form treatise and an extremely dry examination of topics like synthesizing nucleotides, enzymes, and proteins, as well as lengthy descriptions of complicated chemical reactions. Anyone not highly literate in biochemistry will likely be lost after just the first few paragraphs. Points deducted for this, as this is definitely not effective science communication.

********************

Although a ton of valuable information was presented here, the book suffers from a needle and haystack problem. The author did not do a good job of conveying this extremely technical material to the reader in an effective fashion; IMHO. He took a dive into the weeds early on, and never came up to take a breath for the rest of the duration. I am not a fan of books formatted in this way, and my ratings reflect that.
2.5 stars.

[Wendelle]

This book is written jointly by two intellectual juggernauts-- a Nobel Prize Winner in Physiology and a celebrated physicist-- and it stands out for being an exceptional science book that's jam-packed with new information and written with brimming enthusiasm. Instead of focusing solely on extrasolar planets, this book focuses mostly on prebiotic chemistry, which I originally thought was about delicious yogurts but which careful textual reading and prefix analysis reveals to actually be about the study of the chemistry of the building blocks of life, especially as it arose on Earth. This book is so full of new knowledge from the scientific deduction of the rise of life of Earth. For example, gone are wishy-washy visions about 'primordial soups' or 'hydrothermic vents' as the source of the first life on Earth. Instead, this book shows how we now know more and have garnered more knowledge that strengthen hypotheses such as 'RNA world', and the series of steps that lead to production of intermediates and crystallization of the required chemicals for the composition of life, and compartmentalization of proto-cells. It has so much information that it's almost worth having the chemistry degree to fully grasp this book (lol almost). I think the ideal reader would be one whose understanding would benefit from the contextual scaffolding of a few university-level chemistry courses, and can trace the pathways of different chemical reactions specified here through pen and paper.

[Doug Gordon · Rating 4 out of 5]

There's a lot of interesting content in this book, but it is very, very technical and made for difficult reading. The authors are serious scientists (one has a Nobel prize) and even when writing for "lay people" the material is difficult to simplify. The first portion of the book is related to what we know about the origin of life on Earth, and I'll admit to being very lost in the details of the biochemistry and trying to keep track of the esoteric terms and acronyms. We touched on this in one of my science classes (60 years ago!) but I've long forgotten all that.

The second portion relates to the search for extraterrestrial life, and I was much more conversant with the discussions of astronomy and astrophysics. There was definitely a lot here that was new to me regarding the latest techniques for finding planets around other stars and then additional technology capable of detecting life on those planets. Carl Sagan would definitely have liked this book.

In the end, regarding both the origin of life and evidence of extraterrestrial life, my conclusion is that it's one of those cases where the more you know, the more you learn what you don't know. Life elsewhere in the universe has always been of interest to me and the biggest disappointment in this book is the realization that, although we are getting closer to being able to detect that life (or rule it out), so much depends on future experiments and missions in space that are beyond the extent of my lifetime.

[Peter Tillman]

WSJ review: https://www.wsj.com/arts-culture/book...
(Paywalled. As always, I'm happy to email a copy to non-subscribers)
Excerpt:
"According to Messrs. Livio and Szostak, “cutting-edge research has replaced the old-fashioned concept of a ‘prebiotic soup’ with a series of steps in which intermediates are stabilized while in solution, and purified by crystallization.” The process is called cyanosulfidic photoredox chemistry, and the first half of “Is Earth Exceptional?” explains it in considerable detail." New to me.... And I follow this stuff fairly closely. Interesting?

“Is Earth Exceptional?” will be challenging for the lay reader, but it gives a good impression of how much has been achieved, and how much further there is to go."

I'll take a look if/when one of our libraries gets a copy.

[Donato Colangelo · Rating 3 out of 5]

Unfortunately for me, it’s a big no. I gave to it 3 stars just because the second part of the book, written by Mario Livio, in part improves the overall quality of the text, albeit with few reserves.
The first section starts with interesting discussions about the RNA world but soon show how shallow certain positions regarding the origin of life are. In this book ,the authors try to convince people that their take on the subject - that RNA came before metabolism - is the only realistic one. Even if we can find a way to create life in a lab, that doesn’t mean that those processes just discovered are the replicas of what happened 4 billion years ago on Earth: it would rather just suggest that such reactions, under highly controlled conditions by the way, could bring to life. The search for “origins” will remain forever an open field and I agree that nonetheless we must pursue it. There are, though, moments in which one wonders if the conditions set in the lab are possible outside the lab, on a young planet hit by comets and meteors, with unknown frequencies and shaken by frequent volcanic eruptions. The flaws in the theory exposed in the book are all too evident. I appreciated the effort to explain a rather complex chemistry, but I expected the authors had much more to say about the conditions that could, in a plausible way, create and sustain cycles of warm/cold and concentration/dehydration to happen in a regular way. It’s like they have found some way of creating some nucleotides in the lab and they try to explain how on the early Earth some specific conditions might bring about the same results. Lots of conjecture were for example proposed to avoid the inevitable “dilution” problem, which kills any theory about origins that does not deal with the oceans that covered all Earth surface. The authors suggest for instance that compartmentalization happened in “warm little ponds” around volcanoes or in impact craters generated by comets/asteroids. In order to have a pond, we need land, and for that to be a factor to count, we need continents. Otherwise, your pond goes diluted in a sea of water. Now, the most ancient stromatolites are dated 3.5 Ga, which means that life is older than that. It means that continents were aready a thing around 3.5-3.6 Ga, but the most precise dating of the most ancient rocks suggests that the first supercontinent (Vaalbara) formed like 3.1 Ga. It suggests that before that the land exposed above the waves was rather small. Vaalbara itself is called a supercontinent just because it was the biggest assemblage of lands up to that time. In comparison with Columbia, Gondwana or Pangea, it would amount to a really small percentage of land. So, small exposure to the lands means few places where these ponds could be created. Since volcanic eruptions and impacts from rocky objects are extremely energic events, it’s difficult to me to imagine how under such Hadean conditions any such warm little ponds could have found the right set of conditions to concentrate the reactants in order to allow for the RNA to be formed.
This long tirade is just one example of the difficulties with the theory presented in the book. Many other aspects are no so clear as the authors claim to be. For instance, there is no consideration about energy fluxes, redox states of sea and air, and worse still there is no explanation at all of what did the RNAs code for if there was no inherent meaning to the sequence of nucleotides (by the way finding fancy a method to synthesize just 2 of the 4 nucleotides using a chemistry that has nothing at all to do with life is not the most reassuring way to win over a reader). The last chapter of the book makes quite a long list of things that does not fit the tale and leave more questions than it answers. I am sorry, but the alternative explanation, which need refining as well but is far more compelling, still remains the best we have so far. Concerning this, I must say I found it irritating that in the middle of the book the authors wrote a tirade against Prof. Russel and Martin and their alkaline vent scenario or “metabolism first” scenario. The authors show to know almost nothing about it, for they spend 2 pages criticizing without giving any credit to a theory that is far more plausible, simple and… working under natural conditions, which is the biggest hole in their own theory.
The second section of the book is far more interesting because it deals with the recent results about planet exploration. The most recent discoveries and papers on the subjects are presented and discussed in a neat way and I found this part of the book to be the best. Also in this section though, the description of some aspects of the search for life elsewhere in the universe remains just a series of far fetched ideas and theories, sometimes connected to the improbable cyanide-UV light theory described in the first section of the book. All in all, though, it was a nice read as long as astronomy was concerned.
IN conclusion: I don’t believe for a moment that I will read this book again. Its science is not so strong, although the chemistry is sound (under lab conditions).
I expected a far more honest take on a subject that is important for many, but all I can say is that this book it’s not up to the task of giving some plausible answers on the matter of origins.

[Andrew · Rating 2 out of 5]

'Is Earth Exceptional?' is a book by two authors - an astrophysicist and a chemist-biologist - that ends up, for all intents and purposes, being two distinct books: one, a pretty enjoyable look at the possibility of extraterrestrial life; and the other, an examination of how life chemically and biologically developed on Earth, with a thorough chemistry background required for full understanding.

The title gives the impression that this is a book squarely in the cosmology/astronomy field, another publication examining the potential for life outside of Earth. The front flap explains how this book is different from the plethora of others written about extraterrestrial life possibilities, namely a focus on chemistry. It quickly becomes apparent in the first chapter that this is a book that will aim to view life through a chemistry/biology lens, i.e. how likely or unlikely it is that the same chemical and biological processes that occurred on Earth, eventually leading to us humans, is occurring elsewhere in the galaxy and in the universe.

The first half, clearly written by the chemist-biologist, is an incredibly thorough and detailed examination of how life most likely developed here on Earth. It isn't enough to talk about amino acids and some key elements mixing together in a "chemical soup" - this author employs a legitimate college-level assessment of chemistry and biology in explaining what's happening.

This is not for the layman, and by that I mean anyone who doesn't at least have a readily-accessible high school-level comprehension of chemistry. The author clearly knows what he is talking about, and is very clearly passionate about it - I mean this in the best way, because it is not too common for the reader to grasp just how much the author both knows about and loves the subject they are discussing.

But it was too much for me. I held on until Page 72, eyes having glazed over for the majority of the previous 15-20 pages, before I finally gave up and fast-forwarded to Page 141, where the other author, the astrophysicist, takes over. I had to skip over Chapter 10 as well, which was another brief but once again extremely deep dive into chemistry.

The second half of the book, or at least the part written by the astrophysicist, was fantastic. It covered all the topics I was hoping this book would, from recent searches for extraterrestrial life to conjectures about how such E.T. lifeforms could be "found", and of course a detailed look at the famous Drake equation. The second half of this book delivered exactly what the cover of the book implied it would, and for that section it was a pretty engrossing read.

For the reader who was attracted to this book for its cosmology and astronomy angle, like me, the chemistry and biology was simply too much. This is probably a good read for the slice of college students, researchers, scientists and professors who match working in the chemistry/biology field with some sort of interest in space (or vice versa), but as a book ostensibly trying to appeal to the masses (per the title), this missed the mark.

I cannot in good faith give 3+ stars to a book that I had to skip over because I simply could not pay attention any longer for lack of understanding and direction - even if half of the book was exactly what I was hoping for. 2.0/5.0 stars.

[Jen · Rating 4 out of 5]

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

Is the Earth Exceptional? by Mario Livio is a fascinating exploration of one of the most profound questions in science and philosophy: is our planet—and by extension, life as we know it—unique in the universe? With his signature clarity and curiosity, Livio walks the reader through the latest discoveries in cosmology, planetary science, and biology, all while tackling big questions with humility and depth.

What I appreciated most was how Livio balanced scientific evidence with thoughtful speculation. He doesn’t jump to conclusions or lean too heavily into sensationalism. Instead, he presents various perspectives, from the Rare Earth hypothesis to arguments for a more common cosmic biosphere, encouraging readers to engage with the science and form their own views.

Some sections are more technical and may slow down casual readers, but overall, the book remains accessible and engaging. Livio’s writing is both informed and inviting, making complex ideas digestible without oversimplifying them.

This is a compelling read for anyone interested in astrobiology, space exploration, or our place in the cosmos. It left me with a deeper appreciation of Earth—and an even greater curiosity about what else might be out there.

[David Urquhart · Rating 4 out of 5]

If you’re an ultra-nerd (and I am) and ok with opening chapters literally entirely of organic chemistry (I took organic chemistry 20 years ago and it was too dry even for me) and the knowledge that we obviously don’t have a final answer to this question - this book is a detailed exploration of the possibilities of life elsewhere in the universe.
Pros: so much detail simply crushes simplistic debates; while there is uncertainty at every step and this is openly explored, it takes the potential energy out of any one argument based on superficial understanding… and that’s 99% of people, including me of course. More science seems good. The big picture chapters are great.
Cons: even with a background and interest in the subject matter, many chapters in the book are very tough to wade through; chemistry gets technical fast and I suspect most listeners will struggle to maintain interest or to follow at times.
Overall: expanded my understanding of the subject, also was a slog a times, but probably hard to do one without the other and still be more credible than the multitude of less-research-heavy but also dangerously simplistic opinion pieces out there.

[Ron · Rating 5 out of 5]

Wow another great science book for 2025! The authors do an excellent job at explaining the science. I had to look up a few things, but I did not feel lost with what they were talking about in any way. They ask a lot of theoreticals and ask a lot of questions, which given the scope of this topic they are needed. It reminded me of a quote from my favorite mini series, 'Taken', in which they say that life is about asking questions and not about knowing the answers. While we have no answers to the question "Are we alone?" it's one I've pondered since I was 7 years old when I saw the movie 'Contact'. Personally, ever since that age, there's a quote I've always lived by from that movie: "If it's just us it seems like an awful waste of space." Even though we have no direct evidence of extraterrestrials, I strongly (and still) believe that we can't be the only ones. In the grand scheme of things we're just dust particles so it doesn't make sense that we could be the only living creatures in the cosmos. (of course the other part of the coin is just as interesting: that we are alone in the universe.)

[Vadim G · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is an incredible book. A must-read, especially for the truth seekers. There are a couple of reviews here saying that this is not for layman, and it's too much in one book. That is total bs. I am pretty much a layman, and it was incredibly fascinating to follow the story or the pond in which gave rise to myself and all others. The best way to remember everything is to write it down as molecules of CN- in environments of lava and UV radiation contribute to the formation of the nucleotide, but that is the best of it all. This science is ongoing and leaves you with much to think about, pour over, and deduce in your head. (more to come)

[Andrea Wenger · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book delves into cutting-edge research to explore how life arose from inanimate matter on Earth and whether similar processes could be unfolding elsewhere in the cosmos. Is life a cosmic rarity or an inevitable consequence of the laws of nature?

I learned a lot about the potential origins of life in this book, and the different ways life could arise on other celestial bodies. The book is fascinating, entertaining, and easy to read. It focuses on biochemistry rather than on astronomy and geophysics.

Thanks, NetGalley, for the ARC I received. This is my honest and voluntary review.

[Peter Sidell · Rating 5 out of 5]

Much discussion of the biochemistry underlying life. The author outs taking a rigorous approach to the question of whether there is life elsewhere in the universe. The number of exoplanets that are not our less earth like implies life elsewhere is likely. He reviews possible conclusive signs of life. He concludes that we have yet to identify extraterrestrial life, but he expects advances in astronomical instrumentation makes that discovery in th near future likely.
The discussion of how readily we can no detect exoplanets is fascinating.

[Jay · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book is a rewarding read.
Be aware that it reads somewhat like a scientific paper. In other words, possessing basic to moderate science literacy (like me!) isn’t enough to understand *all* of the concepts discussed in the book.
That said, the book will be enriching even for readers who are only moderately scientifically literate, as long as you’re curious enough about the subject matter to put in the work and push through.

[David · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book is on the technical end of popular science writing. I listened to the audiobook, which is probably not the best medium for understanding the nuances of chemical formulae and biological structures.

Still, it's quite a rewarding read, with up to date research results, some clear ideas on how life first came about, and cogent speculation on where our search for other life in the universe may take us.

[Douglas · Rating 3 out of 5]

A little tough to follow the biochemistry and other science, but once I understood that I should just appreciate how complicated it was I was intrigued by the discussion. Like so many reviews of lines of scientific research this left me with as much appreciation for what we don’t know as what we know. If we are not alone in the universe, we are sufficiently isolated to be responsible for our own endeavors…. And I think it is a miracle that we got here at all.

[Edgar Guedez · Rating 5 out of 5]

WHERE IS,EVERYBODY?

This book provides an excellent compendium of the scientific advances to date in order to answeer the two most basic and pressing unknowns of humanity, how life originated on earth and are we alone in the universe? The book is loaded with chemistry and the,authors do a good job to explain it to the common readers but some advanced chemistry knowledge would be needed to better understand the concepts about research on pre biotic chemistry on eartg.

[Keith Turek · Rating 2 out of 5]

This is a book that was desperately in need of a real editor or better yet a ghostwriter. Hard to see who the target audience for this book is, as the chemistry sections (which predominate the book) seem most geared to graduate students in chemistry. Also, in both sections of the book, it seems that what we end up with is endless hypotheticals and speculation. The authors also buy into the transhumanist dogma pretty heavily, something about which I remain agnostic.

[Chris Liberty · Rating 5 out of 5]

"Is Earth Exceptional?" tackles one of the most profound questions in modern science: Is our planet truly unique, or just one of many capable of sustaining life? While there’s no definitive answer, the authors explore this mystery through a dense, science-heavy analysis. I could follow the science—kind of—but explaining it myself would be another challenge entirely. Despite that, I found the audiobook engaging and enjoyable!

[Bridgette Portman · Rating 4 out of 5]

Is Earth exceptional? tl/dr: Probably not, but we don't know.

I really enjoyed this. It does go DEEP into chemistry in several of the early chapters, so unless you are fascinated by fatty acids and vesicles, you might skim it. But it's a very thorough account of the current state of research on both the origin of life and the search for life elsewhere in the universe.

[Brian Corbin · Rating 4 out of 5]

Interesting book. Feels super heavy with biochemistry but it was necessary to prove the author’s points. I didn’t get much from that part because it was so technical but I’m fine with it. If that would bother you, I would skip this book. If you understand it or are okay letting it wash over you, it’s a good read.

[Jim Black · Rating 5 out of 5]

A Stimulating Review of Life’s Origin on Earth and Beyond

I thoroughly enjoyed this excellent summary of two scientific quests: figure out how non-living molecules came alive and find evidence of life beyond earth in our galaxy. The book explains all the science you need to know in order to imagine answers to these two questions.

[Elmwoodblues · Rating 4 out of 5]

A book that is not afraid to give the hard science, with most of the details. Organic chem was never my thing, but I was caught up enough in the basics to stay with any given hypothesis or explanation. I found myself dog-earring more than a few interesting passages to share with a fellow non-chem reader, which ranks as high praise in (forgive me) my book!

[Ed Dragon · Rating 5 out of 5]

Fantastic update on modern research on various cosmology related topics. Moderate view about existence and search of extra terrestrial life. Only about 20% of it, close to the beginning, was an uninteresting part. It was too much information about just the biology.

[Mark · Rating 5 out of 5]

An excellent and very straightforward summary of our search for extraterrestrial life. Contains enough details for those wanting them, especially in the biogenesis thread, but can be skipped over or mentally generalized fairly easily.

[Canadian Scholar · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a great introduction to origins of life chemistry. Honestly the best way to understand the so-called 'Sutherland chemistry'. The discussion of exoplanets and extraterrestrial life leaves a lot to be desired in terms of clarity but it's a nice way to round out the book.

[Steve · Rating 4 out of 5]

Rating of 4.75

[Nancy Kendall]

Libby (11 hrs) - 2 scientists quest for origins of life