Inner Fish

I got very close to finishing Neil Shubin's "Your Inner Fish" http://www.amazon.com/Your-Inner-Fish-Journey-3-5-Billion-Year/dp/0375424474 before Mrs Vache Folle appropriated it for her train reading. I read 90% of it, so I feel that I can render an opinion.

Shubin is a paleontologist who specializes in fish and who was involved in the discovery of fossils of the earliest fish with limbs like our own. He takes the reader on a 3.5 billion year journey and shows how many of the features of our bodies arose in ancient fish and even simpler creatures and how minute changes in genetic switches can account for seemingly large changes in bodies. Best of all, he does this in language that all but the stupidest lay readers can understand.

He doesn't take on "intelligent design" nor does he appear to have an ax to grind (unless it's in the last 10% of the book), but he points out at intervals how our bodies seem to be jerry-rigged rather than built in the most efficient way possible. Since we are basically fish retooled to walk upright and breathe air, you might expect some bugs in the machine.