Some Assembly Required is a lively and accessible guide to the most momentous transformations in the history of life – the evolution of fish into land-dwelling creatures, the origins of birds, how life took the first step from single-celled organisms towards complex beings with bodies. It is also a story that is full of surprises. If you think that feathers arose to help animals fly, or lungs to help animals walk on land, you’d be in good company. You’d also be entirely wrong.

Neil Shubin delves deep into the mystery of life, describing how discoveries of the past fifty years have revolutionised our understanding of how we got here, and brought us closer to answering one of the great questions of science – was life on earth inevitable or is it an accident that we are here at all?