How is it that we came to be here? The search for answers to thatquestion has preoccupied humans for millennia. Scientists have sought clues in thegenes of living things, in the physical environments of Earth from mountaintops tothe depths of the ocean, in the chemistry of this world and those nearby, in thetiniest particles of matter, and in the deepest reaches of space. In Islands of theCosmos, Dale A. Russell traces a path from the dawn of the universe to speculationsabout our future on this planet. He centers his story on the physical and biologicalprocesses in evolution, which interact to favor more successful, and eliminate lesssuccessful, forms of life. Marvelously, these processes reveal latent possibilitiesin life's basic structure, and propel a major evolutionary theme: the increasingproficiency of biological function. It remains to be seen whether the human form cansurvive the dynamic processes that brought it into existence. Yet the emergence ofthe ability to acquire knowledge from experience, to optimize behavior, toconceptualize, to distinguish "good" from "bad" behavior all hint at an evolutionaryoutcome that science is only beginning to understand.