Henry Gee – Jill Grinberg Literary Management

Henry Gee

Henry Gee is a longtime editor at the science journal Nature and author of several works of nonfiction and fiction. His book A (Very) Short History of Life on Earth: 4.6 Billion Years in 12 Pithy Chapters, was published in Fall 2021 by Picador in the UK and by St. Martin’s in the US, has sold in over a two dozen foreign territories, and won the Royal Society Science Book Prize; Picador and St. Martin’s will publish his next book, The Decline and Fall of the Human Empire, in 2025. His previous books include In Search of Deep Time: Beyond the Fossil Record to a New History of Life, Jacob’s Ladder: The History of the Human Genome, The Accidental Species: Misunderstandings of Human Evolution, Across the Bridge: Understanding Vertebrate Origins, and The Science of Middle Earth; his fiction includes The Sigil trilogy, By the Sea, and Hunting Unicorns. His book A Field Guide to Dinosaurs was illustrated by Luis V. Rey. He lives in Cromer, Norfolk, England, with his family.

Agent

Jill Grinberg

The Decline and Fall of the Human Empire

By the award-winning author of A (Very) Short History of Life on Earth: a history of humanity on the brink of decline.

We are living through a period that is unique in human history. For the first time in more than ten thousand years, the rate of human population growth is slowing down. In the middle of this century population growth will stop, and the number of people on Earth will start to decline – fast.

In this provocative book, award-winning science writer Henry Gee offers a concise, brilliantly-told history of our species–and argues that we are on a rapid, one-way trip to extinction. The Decline and Fall of the Human Empire narrates the dramatic rise of humanity, how a scattered range of small groups across several continents eventually inbred, interacted, fought, established stable communities and food supplies, and began the process of dominating the planet. The human story is relatively brief—the oldest fossils of H. Sapiens date to approximately 300,000 years ago—yet the spread of our species has been unstoppable…until recently.

As Gee demonstrates, our population has peaked, and is declining; our environment is becoming inimical to human life in many locations; our core resources of water, arable land, and air are diminishing; and new diseases, simmering conflicts, and ambiguous technologies threaten our collective health. Can we still change our course? Or is our own extinction inevitable?

There could be a way out, but the launch window is narrow.

Unless Homo sapiens establishes successful colonies in space within the next two centuries, our species is likely to stay earthbound and will have vanished entirely within another ten thousand years, bringing the seven-million-year story of the human lineage to an end.

With assured narration, dramatic stories, and his signature sprightly humor, Henry Gee envisions new opportunities for the future of humanity—a future that will reward facing challenges with ingenuity, foresight, and cooperation.

Publisher

St. Martin's

Publication Date

March 18, 2025

Age Category

Adult

Genre

Nonfiction/Science

Rights

Picador (UK)

A (Very) Short History of Life on Earth: 4.6 Billion Years in 12 Pithy Chapters

Winner of the Royal Society Science Book Prize

For billions of years, Earth was an inhospitably alien place—covered with churning seas, slowly crafting its landscape by way of incessant volcanic eruptions, its atmosphere in a constant state of chemical flux. And yet, despite facing literally every conceivable setback that living organisms could encounter, life on Earth has learned and adapted and continued for over four billion years. From the earliest humble slime that filled the atmosphere with oxygen; to the sponges that cleansed the oceans for other animals to live in; to the venturesome fishes with legs that sought life beyond the sea—and, by way of amazing amphibians, dramatic dinosaurs, to the thrilling and unlikely story of ourselves.

Praise for A (Very) Short History of Life on Earth

“With authority, humor, and detail, Gee, a paleontologist and senior editor of Nature, traces the progression of life on earth from its initial stirrings…readers will find this eye-opening book compelling for years to come.”–Booklist (starred review)

“Readers should be chastened at his conclusion, shared by most scientists, that Homo sapiens is making its habitat—the Earth—progressively less habitable and will become extinct in a few thousand years. Gee writes lucid, accessible prose.” –Kirkus

“This is now the best book available about the huge changes in our planet and its living creatures, over the billions of years of the Earth’s existence. Continents have merged and broken up; massive volcanic eruptions have repeatedly reset the clock of evolution; temperatures, atmospheric gases, and sea levels have undergone big swings; and new ways of life have evolved. Henry Gee makes this kaleidoscopically changing canvas of life understandable and exciting. Who will enjoy reading this book? Everybody!”
–Jared Diamond, Pulitzer Prize winning author of Guns, Germs, and Steel and Upheaval

“Don’t miss this delightful, concise, sweeping masterpiece! Gee brilliantly condenses the entire, improbable, astonishing history of life on earth―all 5 billion years―into a charming, zippy and scientifically accurate yarn. I honestly couldn’t put this book down, and you won’t either.”
–Daniel E. Lieberman, author of Exercised

“A scintillating, fast-paced waltz through four billion years of evolution, from one of our leading science writers. As a senior editor at Nature, Henry Gee has had a front-row seat to the most important fossil discoveries of the last quarter century. His poetic prose animates the history of life, from the first bacteria to trilobites to dinosaurs to us.”
–Steve Brusatte, New York Times bestselling author of The Rise and Fall of the Dinosaurs

Publisher

St. Martin's

Publication Date

November 9, 2021

Age Category

Adult

Genre

Nonfiction/Science

Rights

Picador (UK)

Across the Bridge: Understanding Vertebrate Origins

Our understanding of vertebrate origins and the backbone of human history evolves with each new fossil find and DNA map. Many species have now had their genomes sequenced, and molecular techniques allow genetic inspection of even non-model organisms. But as longtime Nature editor Henry Gee argues in Across the Bridge, despite these giant strides and our deepening understanding of how vertebrates fit into the tree of life, the morphological chasm between vertebrates and invertebrates remains vast and enigmatic.

As Gee shows, even as scientific advances have falsified a variety of theories linking these groups, the extant relatives of vertebrates are too few for effective genetic analysis. Moreover, the more we learn about the species that do remain—from sea-squirts to starfish—the clearer it becomes that they are too far evolved along their own courses to be of much use in reconstructing what the latest invertebrate ancestors of vertebrates looked like. Fossils present yet further problems of interpretation. Tracing both the fast-changing science that has helped illuminate the intricacies of vertebrate evolution as well as the limits of that science, Across the Bridge helps us to see how far the field has come in crossing the invertebrate-to-vertebrate divide—and how far we still have to go.

Praise for Across the Bridge

“Across the Bridge takes on a very esoteric subject and is genuinely witty and charming. The book really is magnificent.” –Neil J. Gostling, University of Southampton

Publisher

University of Chicago Press

Publication Date

July 9, 2018

Age Category

Adult

Genre

Nonfiction/Science & Nature

Rights

University of Chicago Press

The Accidental Species: Misunderstandings of Human Evolution

The idea of a missing link between humanity and our animal ancestors predates evolution and popular science and actually has religious roots in the deist concept of the Great Chain of Being. Yet, the metaphor has lodged itself in the contemporary imagination, and new fossil discoveries are often hailed in headlines as revealing the elusive transitional step, the moment when we stopped being “animal” and started being “human.” In The Accidental Species, Henry Gee, longtime paleontology editor at Nature, takes aim at this misleading notion, arguing that it reflects a profound misunderstanding of how evolution works and, when applied to the evolution of our own species, supports mistaken ideas about our own place in the universe.

Gee presents a robust and stark challenge to our tendency to see ourselves as the acme of creation. Far from being a quirk of religious fundamentalism, human exceptionalism, Gee argues, is an error that also infects scientific thought. Touring the many features of human beings that have recurrently been used to distinguish us from the rest of the animal world, Gee shows that our evolutionary outcome is one possibility among many, one that owes more to chance than to an organized progression to supremacy. He starts with bipedality, which he shows could have arisen entirely by accident, as a by-product of sexual selection, moves on to technology, large brain size, intelligence, language, and, finally, sentience. He reveals each of these attributes to be alive and well throughout the animal world—they are not, indeed, unique to our species.

The Accidental Species combines Gee’s firsthand experience on the editorial side of many incredible paleontological findings with healthy skepticism and humor to create a book that aims to overturn popular thinking on human evolution—the key is not what’s missing, but how we’re linked.

Praise for The Accidental Species

“If you only read one book on evolution this year, make it this one. You will be dethroned. But you won’t be disappointed.” –Geoscientist

“The Accidental Species is an excellent guide to our current knowledge of how we got where we are. . . . Highly recommended.” –BBC Focus

“Gee sets out vehemently to dispute our common tendency to see ourselves as the pinnacle of creation, the bold, brilliant branch that is the final growth of the evolutionary tree of life. . . . a thought-provoking and challenging book.” –Library Journal

Publisher

University of Chicago Press

Publication Date

April 29, 2015

Age Category

Adult

Genre

Nonfiction/Science & Nature

Rights

JGLM

Jacob's Ladder: The History of the Human Genome

Jacob’s Ladder delivers a remarkably lucid explanation of what the sequencing of the human genome really tells us. Decoding the sequence, evolutionary biologist Henry Gee shows, is just the beginning: seeing the letters and words. The next frontier is in understanding snatches of conversation between genes―how they interact to direct the growth of an organism. Gee takes us into the heart of that conversation, illuminating how genes govern a single egg cell’s miraculous transformation into a human being, and how they continue to direct that person’s day-by-day development throughout a lifetime.

Gee tells the story of what we know about the genome today and what we are likely to discover tomorrow. As our knowledge advances, we will be able to direct with increasing authority the conversations between genes: not only performing medical interventions but also creating whole scripts directing birth, ancestry, and diversity in a brave new world.

Praise for Jacob’s Ladder

“So we’ve sequenced the human genome. Now what? Gee, a writer for Nature and former professor at UCLA, tackles this question in his examination of how nature generates “form from the formless.” Gee takes his title seriously, describing not only the history of human understanding of biology, but also the history of the evolution of the genome itself.” –Publishers Weekly

Publisher

W.W. Norton & Co.

Publication Date

July 2004

Age Category

Adult

Genre

Nonfiction/Science & Nature

Rights

Norton

In Search of Deep Time: Beyond the Fossil Record to a New History of Life

Cladistics―the science of comparison―is transforming the way paleontologists view evolution. In Search of Deep Time strips away conventional assumptions about the evolution of life to reveal a world that may be far stranger and more humbling than had been previously imagined. The concept of deep time was first used by John McPhee to describe intervals of time incomprehensibly greater than our daily experience. Henry Gee explains the rise of cladistics as the best technique for making sense of the organic changes that unfold within deep time.

Praise for In Search of Deep Time

“A persuasive as well as convivial introduction to cladistics―paleontology’s answer to the discontinuities of Deep Time―from science writer Gee. . . . Gee’s corrective arguments at once ground his science in humility and liberate thinking about Deep Time through their invitation to chart a seamless topology of life then and now.” –Kirkus

“In this eloquent treatise, Gee, a senior science writer for Nature, asserts that the dramatically different scales on which deep and ordinary time are measured have significant implications for evolutionary biology and paleontology.” –Publishers Weekly

“Gee introduces readers to cladistics, the science of comparison that is quietly revolutionizing paleontology. . . . suggesting that. . . the hierarchical tree of life with humans at the top will be replaced by a bush of intertwined evolutionary branches.” –Science News

Publisher

Cornell University Press

Publication Date

December 21, 2000

Age Category

Adult

Genre

Nonfiction/Science

The Science of Middle Earth: Explaining The Science Behind The Greatest Fantasy Epic Ever Told

This page-turning, fun and accessible book by Henry Gee, a senior editor at Nature, gives readers a behind-the-scenes look at the science behind the magic in J.R.R. Tolkien’s fantasy classics The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings trilogy. Learn how dragons breathe fire, the hidden high-tech of the elves, how orcs reproduce, why seeing-stones work, whether balrogs have wings, and much much more about the magic found throughout Middle Earth. Gee’s writing style is accessible and delightful, and he makes a great case that “Tolkien’s own worldview was closer to the true spirit of science than that held by many who propose to promote the public understanding of science.”

Publisher

KDP

Publication Date

November 25, 2013

Age Category

Adult

Genre

Nonfiction/Science

Rights

JGLM