Very entertaining.

The author puts together stories and science in a way that I found informative and entertaining. The book covers an exceptionally wide historical range, from past events and significant discoveries, to newer science I found fascinating and clearly explained.

I am puzzled, though, by his main theme - that life is 'accidental'. He claims what we've learned about nature shows it operates using 'chance', in contrast to being guided by design or purposeful creation.

Although he claims to be against anthropomorphizing, his point of view seems just the opposite. It seems to me that the notions of 'accidental' and 'chance' only have meaning in reference to human expectations and knowledge. The universe just 'is', and it doesn't give a whit about what humans know or expect.

I am a 2 year college graduate, know basics of Science and sometimes go out and view the seen Universe with a telescope. I have on a multitude of times wondered about the information Sean Carroll has opened the door with this book. Thank you Sean, wonder has increased and I am fascinated by your skill writing in such a fashion, an undereducated guy like me can be so enlightened. I was prompted to read this book, seeing you in an interview on FFRF.

Well written discussion on the evolutionary creation of homo sapiens

A nice cross section of science and stories that concisely describe natural and unnatural selection's role in the unfortunate production of human intelligence. Intelligence is quite possibly evolution's greatest mistake. It spawned a life form who's highest goal is achieving it's own extermination.

Excellent, easy to understand explanation of how the universe and the life in it came to existence. Carroll makes it clear that only because of very "unlikely" and seemingly minor changes in a specific process then the outcome changed. He calls these changes "accidents" but I call them the results of a plan made by an all powerful, intelligent creator.

I give five stars because the information is interesting.

This effectively short book (relatively few words per page) is based around a handful of long vignettes. An "evolution" theme: the dinosaur extinction via chance asteroid collision allowed mammals to expand; random mutations as starting ingredients for long-term evolution by natural selection; and the claim that the ice age climate fluctuations (claimed in turn as an incidental consequence of continental drift) was a driver of the evolution of human intelligence (both those claims are in fact scientifically debatable). And a "medical" theme: the immune system production of antibodies is driven by its own rapid process of random mutation; the role of different types of mutations, over a lifetime, driving cancer incidence. Finally a cleverly creative imaginary "conversation about chance" between interesting real individuals (from Eric Idle to Kurt Vonnegut).

The stated theme of the book is:

"It is almost trivial to claim that the world is the way it is or that we are here because of a long chain

of chance, albeit fortunate, events. The explanatory power I seek comes from specificity.

It is essential to unpack some of those events to appreciate how they shape the direction of life."

These specifics are explained in clear and engaging style -- around the middle of the spectrum (gee-whiz to ponderous academic) of popular science writing. And are loosely matched with little stories about individuals.

However I'm unsure of the target audience. Those who have read considerable popular science will have seen several of these 5 main topics before. For others, maybe brief discussions of 50 such events would be more convincing about the extent of chance in the Making of the Planet, Life, and You.

The topic of this book relates to one of the greatest unsolved questions in science, the Fermi Paradox -- why don't we see evidence of extraterrestrial technological civilizations? (see Steven Webb's "WHERE IS EVERYBODY? for a popular account). One common suggestion is that in fact the initial probability of such civilization emerging on Earth was very very small. But this Big Picture question isn't addressed -- to me a curious omission.

Just right for curious more or less layperson, excellent graphics

The book is well written and teaches you some interesting things about the history of earth and life, as well as some biology especially genetics. However, there was actually nothing really new for me to learn. And to be honest, I don't see what's the message of the book except for "Look, randomness is everywhere". But that's barely something shocking to learn. It's maybe not the author's fault, maybe I was just not target audience. But if you expect some new lessons not found in already published books or you look for deep new insights on randomness and on why everything is random, you will be probably disappointed.

Very interesting

Author is a learned one. However if the reader wants to have a good and deep explanation on the way in which evolution and randomness work this is not the book. I was left with the question on how the evolution evolves.

Liked this book.