An amazing book, everything looks a little different after reading it. The whole book is mind-blowing but the last two chapters are in a class by themselves. ( )

I was exactly the Carl Sagan loving hippie atheist that this book was conceived/designed/written for. I knew I had to have it nearly the second I heard it existed. (First I had to check its bona fides to make sure that it wasn't a tome of woo. It wasn't.)

But early in the book I struggled to love it as much as I wanted to love it. Was Stager just not yet hitting his stride in balancing his scientific and poetic language? Were my expectations just unreasonable? Was it my common struggle of wanting to understand the issues at a deeper level than the book was written for? Specifically, a lot of the element tracking in this book is down by isotope analysis, yet not all the explanations of why that particular isotope of that element is preferentially absorbed/retained/concentrated were as successful as I would have liked.

Let me back up here. Stager organizes the book element by element -- carbon, oxygen, hydrogen, iron, etc. -- and devotes a chapter to each. So, carbon: where did the carbon in your body come from? How long does it stay there? How does it change (in what molecules is it involved)? How does it leave your body? And so on.

But I fell totally in love during a discussion of the rhizomatic bartering system -- the way that plants share and "buy" nutrients from their fungal neighbors in the soil. Magical and fascinating! I found myself spilling over and trying to explain it all to random people at work.

Once I was hooked, I stayed hooked, and ended up extremely pleased with the book overall. I brought the book to work to keep as a reference and am avidly hoping for some good excuse to look up isotopic accumulation and re-read the sections of the book that I struggled with the first time.

Clearly I need to pitch a "we are all stardust" camp, right?

There were those moments of "science mysticism" that I was longing for -- the "who am I, when I am constantly shedding atoms, molecules, sharing them with my neighbor, the potted plant on the other side of the room..." and also the "breathing the same air as Einstein, Aristotle, Hitler," and the "I remain." moments. Definitely worth a read. And even a re-read. ( )

This book was a fascinating book, and it most definitely contained a relevant amount of scientific information and background. The information was more than merely trivia - it was presented in a way that provided understanding, rather than the memorization of fact. I also appreciate that the book weaves vivid imagery throughout. There were, however, a handful of times when I felt that the descriptions were over-exaggerated and overly flamboyant. That being said, the book forces the reader to think about their existence, which is an accomplishment in itself. ( )