The Rise and Fall of the Dinosaurs - A New History of a Lost World

It is really a matter of expectation for me. The BBC series "Walking With Dinosaurs" was really fascinating to me many years ago. This book purports to bring us up to date on the massive amount of recent research. It starts out slow and very egocentric, written more to glorify the recent generation of scientists. I'm sorry, but the eccentric habits of hippie-nerd paleontologists as they go about their work just aren't that interesting. What I wanted was to learn in some depth how the field has advanced in the past 20 years and to get a vivid picture of what the world of dinosaurs was like. It does get better in the last few chapters and start to provide a bit of that. If that had been the author's goal he might have done a better job.

If you think you learned everything worth knowing about dinosaurs when you had that unit in fourth grade, have I got a surprise for you.
Steve Brusatte's The Rise and Fall of the Dinosaurs: A New History of a Lost World is full of shockers about the way dinosaurs are understood. The past generation has seen myriad new species discovered and major changes in the scientific understanding of these beings that ruled the Earth for over 100 million years, changes that pop culture hasn't begun to comprehend. Even if you are somewhat better informed than average, you will find yourself astounded by such discoveries as that many or even most of the dinosaurs were feathered (including T. Rex!), warm blooded, fast-moving, and relatively intelligent.
Oh, and not only are birds true-blue dinosaurs, they belong to the same group, the theropods, as T. Rex, allosaurus, and many of the other most fearsome dinosaur predators. I challenge your imagination NOT to be stirred by the thought of that relationship, or of how alien the Earth was when dinosaurs first evolved and all the land in the world was lumped together in one giant continent.
Accompanied by gorgeous illustrations and Brusatte's infectiously vigorous prose, this book is a must-have for anyone who has ever wondered what life was like before that asteroid put an end to the real Good Old Days.

Very readable but still science based book. He includes brief descriptions of others in the field that are endearing but also expose you to the wide variety of subspecialities in paleontology. You can get the big picture of evolution without learning complicated dinosaur names

This book was a fascinating and compelling overview of the evolution of dinosaurs. The explanatory chapters linking dinos to birds were particularly interesting. Overall, a comprehensive, fascinating, and rewarding read.

It's an interesting read however it's hard to get over the authors belief that everything that came before him was incredibly stupid. And that only with the new generation of scientists (i.e. millenials) are we fully able to understand what happened. I think the author would benefit from understanding that he is able to do what he does because of the hundreds of years of scientists working to understand before him. That he is able to build on a foundation based on the men and women that risked life and limb and everything else to create the history that they were able to at that time. That they fought governments, religions, lack of money, time, etc to do what they did. Which is miraculous because they didn't have airplanes, social media, the Internet, phones, CT scanners, etc. It's also a little off putting that everything is presented as absolute fact. The reality is the scientists before him knew enough to know that they were guessing at what happened - educated guesses to be sure - but guessing based on the evidence they could find. So while the author is a pretty smart guy, it's too bad he's not smart enough to give credit to the amazing men and women who lived and died to lay the foundation for his amazing life.

The story of the rise and fall of the dinosaurs is surely one of the best in the history of life and earth, and this book had every chance to be the best for the layperson on the topic. The book is fairly accessible, avoiding the dry listing of hundreds of Latin names that go in one ear and out the other in this sort of book, and it is written well and by an expert.

Unfortunately, it suffers from some severe problems. Strangely for a book written by an expert, it is scientifically exaggerated or dubious in many places. For example, there is no scientific consensus on the cause of the two big extinctions that probably contributed to the rise of dinosaurs, but Brusatte writes as if the cause of both were well known. This is a minor issue, which I can attribute to trying to keep the book simple and for this story the exact cause doesn't matter that much. But his description of Tyrannosaurus rex biology is wildly exaggerated to just plain wrong and clearly intended to capture readership. I could locate no evidence that T. rex was as "smart as a chimp" or even remotely close. The encephalization quotient (essentially brain size) data I could find suggests more like a below average bird. Also, the evidence that T. rex was a pack hunter is extremely thin and highly disputed in the field. I found myself increasingly dubious about all the claims I didn't take the time to check and you should be too.

The other problems with the book are the self-aggrandizing tone (it sounds as if nearly everything in the past 20 years of dinosaur research was done by Brusatte, his thesis advisor, or one of their best buddies) and the extreme focus on large carnivores. The author does occasionally mention other dinosaurs, but often even then it is describe them as prey. It is rather like writing a book on the rise of mammals and spending 90% of your time on wolves and lions. Yet another repetition of the bone-crushing bite and massive size of a T. rex adult? Just wait a few pages, Brusatte will find another way to say the same thing.

In short, the book is a very readable and even compelling account of some parts of a fascinating story, but dubious accuracy and an extreme skew toward huge carnivores detract badly from its value.

The storytelling is good, the writing is conversational and it always seems interesting. There's plenty of real science as well, and I won't say I never skimmed anything, but I was always brought back to the narrative. This is funny, too, and dwells on characters not just dinosaurs. Good stuff. I might add, it would've been great back in the day to have had Steve Brusatte as a teacher. He's funny, engaging and his passion makes you want to see the world through his eyes. Oh, yeah, let's also make sure climate science deniers read it. :

This is the best, most interesting dinosaur book I've ever read. The audio book is wonderful!! I've got both and love both. Great listening for driving to work and then I read in the book at home. Get both for pictures and it's great to reread sections. I will order his next book whatever the subject because a great storyteller is hard to find.

The story of the rise and fall of the dinosaurs is surely one of the best in the history of life and earth, and this book had every chance to be the best for the layperson on the topic. The book is fairly accessible, avoiding the dry listing of hundreds of Latin names that go in one ear and out the other in this sort of book, and it is written well and by an expert.

Unfortunately, it suffers from some severe problems. Strangely for a book written by an expert, it is scientifically exaggerated or dubious in many places. For example, there is no scientific consensus on the cause of the two big extinctions that probably contributed to the rise of dinosaurs, but Brusatte writes as if the cause of both were well known. This is a minor issue, which I can attribute to trying to keep the book simple and for this story the exact cause doesn't matter that much. But his description of Tyrannosaurus rex biology is wildly exaggerated to just plain wrong and clearly intended to capture readership. I could locate no evidence that T. rex was as "smart as a chimp" or even remotely close. The encephalization quotient (essentially brain size) data I could find suggests more like a below average bird. Also, the evidence that T. rex was a pack hunter is extremely thin and highly disputed in the field. I found myself increasingly dubious about all the claims I didn't take the time to check and you should be too.

The other problems with the book are the self-aggrandizing tone (it sounds as if nearly everything in the past 20 years of dinosaur research was done by Brusatte, his thesis advisor, or one of their best buddies) and the extreme focus on large carnivores. The author does occasionally mention other dinosaurs, but often even then it is describe them as prey. It is rather like writing a book on the rise of mammals and spending 90% of your time on wolves and lions. Yet another repetition of the bone-crushing bite and massive size of a T. rex adult? Just wait a few pages, Brusatte will find another way to say the same thing.

In short, the book is a very readable and even compelling account of some parts of a fascinating story, but dubious accuracy and an extreme skew toward huge carnivores detract badly from its value.

The storytelling is good, the writing is conversational and it always seems interesting. There's plenty of real science as well, and I won't say I never skimmed anything, but I was always brought back to the narrative. This is funny, too, and dwells on characters not just dinosaurs. Good stuff. I might add, it would've been great back in the day to have had Steve Brusatte as a teacher. He's funny, engaging and his passion makes you want to see the world through his eyes. Oh, yeah, let's also make sure climate science deniers read it. :

This is the best, most interesting dinosaur book I've ever read. The audio book is wonderful!! I've got both and love both. Great listening for driving to work and then I read in the book at home. Get both for pictures and it's great to reread sections. I will order his next book whatever the subject because a great storyteller is hard to find.

I didn't care for many of the stories, and boy does Mr. Brusatte tell a train load of them. However, that said, often the stories would catapult into some very technical, in-depth information on how paleontology is as a study and a science. For me, that's when this book was at it's best.

I enjoyed the "fictional" stories about the end of the dinosaur days.

The Tyrannosaur chapter was a surprise and a real delight to read. It spurred me to look at getting more books about one fascinating beast.

The Acknowledgements section was amazing too. Lots of papers, journals, and books to reference for further reading (something I think a good book should always do, make you want to read all the books that helped it come into being).

On several topics, said the same thing several times, maybe each slightly differently, but not certain why any point needed to be repeated, it was almost as if he had forgotten that he had said it already. Also, and this may be seen, by someone else, as a strength and not a weakness, but the author goes from the tiniest scientific detail into big, imaginative descriptions that would seem to be more suitable for a child's story. And, hey, I was reading about dinosaurs in the '50's when nobody, but the most nerdy would do so. Definitely needs more drawings/pictures, particularly comparative ones, to see what these guys looked like in real life. I bought a 'picture book' of dinosaurs to get a better understanding.

This book is simultaneously a short-read (main text 350pgs) and a slog to read. As others have noted (see the 1 star reviews), the author's writing style distracts from the main narrative of the text (dinosaur evolution). Much of this text reads like a work of fiction written by high school student. To wit, "The Permian Period-when that weird and wonderful cast of creatures was frolicking alongside the Polish lakes." Frolicking? Really?

Almost every time a new person is mentioned, the author will divaricate from the main topic and then expose the reader to perfervid prose and excessive adjectives. For example, "The man holding it was young, with a close-cropped military hairstyle, his hairline just starting to recede like mine. His eyes were dark, and he was squinting. A thin veneer of stubble covered his face, and he seemed to be a little darker than most of the Poles I knew. Tanned, almost." Who cares!? This person is nobody to me. But this goes on for pages. Plus he goes into the educational backgrounds, childhood experiences, etc of these people. I approached the beginning of each chapter and chapter subsection with dread, knowing the page after page was marinated with superfluous details.

As for the main topic: dinosaurs and their evolution, this book is sorely lacking. I wish he wrote about dinosaurs at the level of detail that he writes about his colleagues. He really does not write about evolution in a way that informs the reader how the process works or why certain adaptations were, well adaptive. These are examples of the poor level of detail that he goes into, "the second, the avemetatarsalians, developed into pterosaurs," "...looking at traces left behind by the type of animal that evolved into dinosaurs," "...at some point, one of these primitive dinosauromorphs evolved into true dinosaurs." That's it. Then he moves on. Here's his discussion of bird evolution "They lost their tails and teeth, ditched one of their ovaries, and hollowed out their bones even more to lessen their weight. Their breathing became more efficient, their growth faster, and their metabolism more supercharged, so that they became fully warm-blooded, able to maintain a constant high internal body temperature. With each evolutionary enhancement, they became even better fliers, some able to stay airborne for hours on end, others able to sail through the oxygen-starved upper reaches of the troposphere, over the rising Himalayas." While before he went into some detail in feather evolution (his facts are bit sketchy though) the rest of these features are just mentioned in passing. As to why any of these traits adaptive, it's on you to do your own research.

"Walking upright, it seems, was one of the way in which animals recovered-and indeed, improved-after the planet was shocked by the volcanic eruptions." And that's it. He doesn't say why that's the case, it just is. Other times he will say "we don't know why..." Not knowing for certain and not having a theory are two different things. This is a really frustrating book to read. As someone whose childhood love of dinosaurs has been retained into adulthood, and now I'm sharing that passion with my children, I eagerly bought this book hoping for the most updated information on the evolution of dinosaurs. What I get instead was detailed biographies of paleontologists, a cursory overview of dinosaurs through the Triassic, Jurassic, and Cretaceous, and a feeling of disappoint that will gave me the fantods.

The only chapter that I really enjoyed was the T. Rex chapter. I have always wondered, why is T. Rex so special? To my thinking, there were other predators that were larger than T. Rex, so it wasn't size. There were other predators that were more agile, so it wasn't speed. There were other predators that dominated the food chain longer, so it wasn't staying power. My conclusion was, since T. Rex was one of the first super predators discovered and was a cultural phenomenon in the early 20th century, that was why it had staying power. However, this chapter in the book does answer the question, Why T. Rex? That chapter also shows, however, that T. Rex is probably the best studied of all the dinosaurs, so if that amount of time and effort went into another predator, maybe T. Rex would lose some of its luster. Anyway, If only you could purchase that chapter alone, it's worth the read.

Overall, I do not recommend this book.

To get an understanding of how great this book could have been, I recommend Neil Shubin's "Your Inner Fish." It's not about dinosaurs, but rather the evolutionary links that connect us to other animals. Neil knows how to write to a lay audience in a way that is informative and interesting.

From small dinosaurs that could fly to the world’s Largest Animals EVER & their unexpected demise Mr Brusatte explains the interaction of their fossils and the men & women in a world wide search for their remains through which their history can be told.

I've always steered clear of science books like this - when they get super "science"-y, I feel like it all just starts going right over my head. This book, though, was incredibly accessible and engaging. A page-turner, even. I found I couldn't put it down. I learned more about dinosaurs in my weekend reading this book than I have in all of my years since I had a dinosaur encyclopedia I'd spend hours reading and rereading as a kid. Fun, informative, captivating. This book made me feel like a kid again in all the best ways.

If you want to acquire information about the types of dinosaurs, their general habitats, and overall diversity, this would be a good place to start. If you are already educated on this subject and are looking for fresh insights into the appearance and evolution of dinosaurs, there is, unfortunately, little in the way of new information. Most of what the author brings to the subject has already been covered.

I appreciate the author’s enthusiasm in presenting the material covered here and his forays into the field work necessary to capture fossil evidence. His speculations regarding the morphological underpinnings of dinosaur evolution are just that, speculation. What’s wrong with stating the obvious? The author doesn’t know, you don’t know, and neither do I.

The writing is not, as some reviewers suggest, sophomoric. It is well-suited for this type of leisurely jaunt through the paleontological world.

As the author manages to contribute more in his field, I am certain he will be able to provide new insights worth sharing to enthusiastic readers of all things dinosaurs-ish. He shouldn’t be discouraged; he has plenty of time to make substantial, new, contributions to his field.

This book provides an excellent summary of the current state of paleontology from the perspective of a working scientist. It's stunning to realize how quickly the science has advanced in recent decades. As recently as the 1980s, most people believed dinosaurs were lumbering beasts with lizard-like skin that gradually died away in the face of competition from smaller, smarter mammals. Now we know that many of them were quick, probably warm-blooded, fast-growing, covered in colorful feathers (and in some cases we even know which colors). We know that some of them hunted in packs. We know that some of them guarded their eggs and cared for their young. And we know a lot about the big rock that fell from the heavens 65 million years ago and wiped them out.

Brusatte covers his material roughly chronologically, from the emergence of the first dinosaurs, 230-240 million years ago, until their cataclysmic extinction 170 million years later. Obviously, he can't cover each period in much detail. Instead, he concentrates on broad themes, especially related to the competition between dinosaurs and other creatures alive on earth at the time, the lives and experiences of paleontologists (many of whom Brusatte still regards with a child-like awe), experiences in the field finding dinosaur bones and other evidence, a discussion of some recent major realizations that he thinks may not have been fully appreciated by the public (especially on the subject of birds, which he regards as living dinosaurs, without any qualifications). He dedicates a chapter to the Tyrannosaurus Rex, on the basis that most people, including him, find it fascinating and iconic.

Brusatte's enthusiasm and love for this material shines on every page. You'd be hard pressed to read the book and not wish that maybe you had become a paleontologist too. New discoveries are being made all the time, even new species being identified almost every week.

Several people who saw me reading the book asked to borrow it. My daughter gets it first; I'm sure she will like it too.

In Rise and Fall, the latest in dinosaur science is presented in a highly readable science book doubling as a rip-roaring adventure tale. The story of dinosaurs, not just as fossils but as real animals, is masterfully presented here by paleontologist Steve Brusatte. I've been reading dinosaur books for 50 years (they were, literally, the first books I ever read), and this volume belongs on the desk of every dino-lover.
The first thing Brusatte does, superbly, is to put the dinosaurs into context. From the end-Permian extinction through the first phase of the Triassic period, the dinosaur-to-be lineage was one of several vying for dominance, and not as the favorites. They ascended through adaptability and luck, radiating into niches all over Pangea. Dinosaurs left the sea and, initially, the sky to other reptile cousins, but their dominance of the land became absolute. As the world transformed several times over 150 million years, the dinos changed with it. They developed thousands of species (a new one is described, on average, every week, one of many things I didn't know before reading this book), culminating in the monstrous predators like T. rex and the stupendous sauropods of South America that grew longer than blue whales. In modern-day China and elsewhere, they also produced tiny forms that adapted to flight and stayed on as birds. Brusatte interweaves his science with dramatic tales of the great adventures and colorful lives that unfolded as people sought out new fossils and argued over what they meant. T. rex is the only dinosaur that gets its own chapter (and why should it not)? Brusatte weighs in on the controversies over whether T. rex had feathers and whether it hunted in packs (yes and yes). At the end, he takes us on a harrowing journey with the last dinosaurs as they watch death bloom from the sky.
The author reminds us repeatedly that dinosaurs are not merely skeletons or film stars. They were dynamic, evolving, living, breathing animals that ruled the Earth for a thousand times as long as modern humans have been dominant. The science will continue to evolve, but it's hard to imagine a better treatment of dinosaurs in a mere 350 pages is on the horizon. Shadows of Existence: discoveries & speculations in zoology

Loving this book. For anyone who at any time in their lives fell in love with dinosaurs, this is the book for you. Steve Brusatte is the perfect guide on this intellectual adventure tale filled with fantastic beasts and lost worlds ... all true, based on the most cutting edge research. There's something fascinating on every page. It's also gorgeously and generously illustrated. Buy it!

I totally agree with Fred Reed's review. Over the years I've had the pleasure of reading many of the top-rated books describing prehistoric life, especially in the Triassic, Jurassic, and Cretaceous periods, but this disappointing book is not much more than a sad rehash of most of what has been written before and, worse, uses undisciplined pre-high school English. It appears as if the author prefers using witticisms and slang over acceptable scientific prose, even for a layman. to make matters worse, he throws around too many of the scientific terms for the animals he's supposed to be explaining, with only rare line drawings. The reader is left to wonder that in the world he's trying to picture. Perhaps Brusatte's writing will mature when he gets a bit older but, for the time being, he should stick to hunting for fossils rather than writing about them.

I want to thank Dr Brusatte for writing “The Rise and Fall of Dinosaurs” which is the type of science book I have come to enjoy. I appreciate the level of technical explanation and the narrative style he has mastered to present this story in such an engaging way. For me, this was an out of field reading experience and I was brought along very effectively as he took his readers from the emergence of dinosaurs in the Triassic to their demise (except for birds) 65 million years ago. I appreciate the level of detailed explanation he offers and how he weaves the fossil record in to support his major perspectives. I also come away with an appreciation of the remarkable dynamism of the field, as new discoveries and interpretations continue to write the dinosaur’s history anew. His discussion of the emergence of feathers on dinosaurs, and how some of those feathered creatures ultimately became birds is fascinating. My reading in recent years has spanned paleontology, genetics, geology and early earth history and this is actually the first dinosaur focused book I have read. It has kindled my interest in the field and it will not be the last. A good book challenges the reader and raises questions that might not have occurred otherwise. For me it raises question about the nature of bipedalism in dinosaurs and whatever parallels might exist with mammals (us). In addition to the scientific exploration of dinosaur history, the book is enriched by Dr. Brusatte’s stories of life in the field, the insight into the collaborative nature of paleontological research and the way his experience with scientific progress is tied to the friendships and the professional respect that he has developed around the world. I look forward to Dr. Brusatte’s next book.

Just finished reading "The Rise and Fall of the Dinosaurs - A New History of a Lost World" by Steve Brusatte, published by William Morrow.
Perhaps one of the leading paleontologists and paleobiologists in the world, Brusatte, who teaches at the University of Edinburgh , has written a comprehensive yet fun and thoroughly enjoyable book that captures all the wonders and mysteries of dinosaurs that still intrigues everyone.
Bursatte shows how dinosaurs evolved to take over an ecological niche that developed from a great extinction event and explains how dinosaurs like the T-Rex actually evolved and why their tiny arms were actually formidable weapons in their own right. Professor Bursatte also explores how dinosaurs became extinct despite being so successful and even surviving the asteroid impact that eventually sounded their death knell.
Bursatte has written a love story to dinosaurs that is well worth reading.
HIGHLY RECOMMENDED!
TEN STARS!

This was a delightful return to paleontology for someone who was once a dinosaur-obsessed kid. Brusatte's prose is engaging and vivid, but not pop-science. He delves deep into the evolutionary transformations that created the dinosaurs, developed them, and then killed off the ones who didn't turn into what we now know as birds. (And yes, he does come down very firmly on that point -- not that birds evolved from dinosaurs, but that birds are literally dinosaurs, if a specific and somewhat odd subset of them, the way that marsupials are a specific and somewhat odd subset of mammals). I do feel like the book would have benefited from more illustrations, though, especially when he's discussing the relative sizes of dinosaurs and their genetic brethren, or other physiological developments. Brusatte's writing is at its best and most evocative when it it as its most imaginative: describing the fight between a T-rex and and a trike, painting the picture of the Mesozoic landscape, or chillingly rendering the catastrophic impact of an asteroid hitting what would become the Yucatan peninsula. (Seriously, that last bit put a hitch in my throat, as though it hadn't happened 65 million years ago). Overall, this book reminded me of what joy there is in studying and imagining these creatures who once owned our world.

Steve Brusatte’s The Rise and Fall of the Dinosaurs: A New History of a Lost World is a remarkable success. One part Mesozoic overview, one part Brusatte biography, and one part revealing look at the nature of paleontology in the past two centuries. Taken together, Brusatte has engineered one of the more compelling accounts of the evolution of dinosaurs and, more importantly, the role that paleontologists have played in better understanding these long lost leviathans. While offering unique takes on heated debates in paleontology, Brusatte’s primary goal for The Rise and Fall of the Dinosaurs is to show that “dinosaurs were not aliens, nor were they failures, and they’re certainly not irrelevant.” While this conclusion might not seem particularly revolutionary, the manner, style, and course taken to prove said point as created a work that will surely be enjoyed by the public and debated by the inner-circles of paleontologists.

I read the 1 star reviews given for this book and am astonished at how ignorant these reviews are. This isn't meant to be for the degree seeking public, it's meant for the non-scientist general public. It is an entertaining, well written summary of the latest information concerning dinosaurs. That he adds some flavor about the people he works with and the places he goes to find/study the fossils adds to the enjoyment. If you want a dry, textbook, detailed treatment on the subject, look elsewhere. If you want a fun summary and glimpse into the world of paleontology, buy this book.

Maybe the best book on dinosaurs available today -- a winning blend of prehistory, science history, and memoir.

Steve Brusatte's amazing book is an instant classic -- not just on dinosaurs, but on the history of paleontology and as a scientific memoir. Brusatte, who teaches at the University of Edinburgh, blends these three themes together expertly, with careful attention to their balance. He recounts the rise and fall of the dinosaurs, a remarkably successful constellation of species that dominated the earth for over two hundred million years; the origins and development of how human beings came to study dinosaurs from the early 1800s to the present; and a charming meditation on his own development as a paleontologist, his close friendships with colleagues in the field, and his experiences on the hunt for dinosaurs and answers to the immemorial questions surrounding them. Any person -- whether a dinosaur fan or an admirer of fine history of science or just plain excellent writing -- will benefit from reading this book.

Dr Steve Brusatte has written a fantastic book. Reading this book is like sitting in the background where you are swapping family stories on a pleasant afternoon. His writing is fun to read, allowing this grandfather to try stay informed and understanding grand kids interest in dinosaurs. This book informs the reader about the latest dinosaur finds, the history of fossil collection, and learning the names of the scientists currently involved. This book left me wishing this book was longer. Hopefully, Dr Brusatte continues his writing career. Enjoy, because I did.

Our family listened to the audio version of The Rise and Fall of Dinosaurs recently. We all loved it for various reasons. It definitely was a book for us (laypeople) with a narrative interwoven with scientific facts. I would definitely classify this as a fun summer read that hard to put down rather than a rigorous (i.e. boring) textbook that's hard to pick up. We really looked forward getting in to the car together because that meant we could listen to The Rise and Fall of Dinosaurs. I enjoyed learning the backstory and the connection between the various people described in the book; it was nice to hear a bit more human interest than what is normally included in scientific articles and blogs. My spouse loved the vividness of the descriptions especially of the extinction events. Our enthusiastic and precocious budding paleontologist loved hearing about the adventures in the field and, of course, the dinosaurs from the back in his booster seat. While not an appropriate book for all ages, we certainly enjoyed it with our son. His favorite part were some catchphrases about certain dinosaurs; for example, when talking about Allosaurus he dramatically says: 'Allosaurus: The Butcher of the Jurassic'. It's a pretty hilarious inside joke for our family!

I thoroughly enjoyed this engaging dinosaur book. The Audible version has a reader with an interesting voice, just on the edge of humor and with a distinct character. I thought I would hate it, but within the first few minutes I found that I really liked the voice. He never messes up the pronunciation of all those complicated dinosaur names. The book itself is wonderful - you can tell that for this paleontologist, dinosaurs live and breathe. The final segments about the asteroid, and the seagull, are some of the best in the book.

Steve Brusatte delivers with this book. Finding dinosaur books that keep scientific accuracy along with readability is a rarity, but is done beautifully in this piece. If you are looking for a technical journal publication, this is not the intent of this piece. If you would like to read journal publication material, Dr. Brusatte has more than enough to go around, google it. This is also not a book for your three-year old, and again, that is not the intent. Anyone interested in dinosaurs, evolution, or the field of paleontology needs to pick up this book. It will only make you all the more excited for where the field is going.Dr. Brusatte represents the younger paleontologists that today's kids will look up to and be inspired by to be a paleontologist. Great stories, great finds, great facts, all around a good time.

On the front of the hardcover edition of "Rise and Fall of the Dinosaurs" is a stamp declaring the book "a triumph" as quoted by Neil Shubin, author of the truly excellent "Your Inner Fish." After having read "Rise and Fall" I wonder, "A triumph of what?" Did Shubin have anything more to say? Add my review to the chorus of those many readers that were turned off by the writing style. I am in complete agreement with all those giving a single star. I differ by giving a 2-star rating in that I did find some useful information, which in a few select parts, was presented clearly, such as in the passages on how continental drift and consequent climate change shaped dinosaur evolution. Most of the serious material, however, was not given much depth in description, and some is pure speculation without support (though rarely presented as such.) Many readers giving high marks to the book praised the author's "easy-to-read" and "fun" writing style--I am sorry to hear that readers find that kind of writing appealing. If I didn't know otherwise, I would have assumed the book to have been written by a high-schooler--he could have done much better. I sincerely hope that "The Rise and Fall of the Dinosaurs" does not exemplify the future of science writing. And finally, like many other readers, I also don't give a hoot about the author's impressions of the personality traits of fellow paleontologist, nor their partying habits. I am a biologist, and over my long career I have come to recognize that scientists in any field are just like all other people, displaying a broad range in personalities and preferences for fun. I saw nothing unique about the author's colleagues in that regard.

I absolutely loved this book. I was looking for more info on the dinos, but without getting into anything too dense. Stephen Brusatte nails it on the head for the curious, casual reader! The mix of storytelling with facts makes it a perfect read for somebody like me- a person who played with dinosaurs as a kid, loves all the Jurassic Park movies (but mostly the first one), and loves to imagine what earth was like back then- but has never taken it beyond a casual interest.

I have found it difficult to learn more about dinosaurs and natural history through the internet. I find myself skimming pages of information that are just too dense to keep me interested for long enough to learn anything substantial. "The Rise and Fall of the Dinosaurs" is the perfect solution! I feel like the balance of story telling with facts kept me interested (I truly could not put it down), and at the end of the day, I walked away with substantially more knowledge. I would recommend this book to anybody who has the same curiosity but hasn't quite gotten their fill.

I enjoyed the book so much that I wrote Mr. Brusatte an email to let him know- and he wrote back! Thank you Stephen!

I've read a number of books about dinosaurs but never really felt I understood the subject. This book changed that. Brusatte has taken a complex subject and put it into layman's terms without sacrificing the science behind the theories. Besides being a comprehensible work, it was a fun read! After all, you've not wasted your day if you learn something new, and this book is a month's worth of new stuff that's easily readable in a much shorter time.

Brusatte does it again! Such a great book! I have always been fascinated by dinosaurs but I don't have a huge scientific background. This book did a great job of keeping me engaged for someone with limited science background. I highly recommend!

As I was preparing for a trip abroad, for work--and since I knew I'd have long stretches of downtime in between--I wanted something different to read. My usual fare, because of my work and background, is religion, history, politics. While passing through Book Culture on Broadway, here in New York City, I saw this book, went ahead and got a copy, and enthusiastically recommend it to anyone and everyone. Even if you're not a specialist in the field -- and I'm certainly not -- you'll find the book utterly fascinating. And maybe more so, because so much of this was new, and news, to me. Brusatte is a lovely writer. He explains difficult concepts lucidly. He provides details that bring his stories to life. He knows how to weave together history, theory, biology, and conjecture. And perhaps what I loved most of all was his honesty and humility. True science is a cooperative endeavor, and Brusatte is very generous with his recognition of the many people who helped his scholarship, and advanced our collective knowledge of a fascinating chapter in Earth's history. Also it's just damned fun. Who knew a T-Rex could bite through a car.

I loved this book. It is well written and I found it hard to put down. Author Steve Brusatte weaves a fast-moving story that reads more like a novel than non-fiction. Not only does he clearly and in conversational terms discuss dinosaurs, he also liberally includes personal anecdotes and humor to explain how we know what we know. I strongly recommend this book for anyone interested in science.
Disclosure: I received a complimentary copy of this book via Edelweiss for review purposes.

As someone who has a vey strong scientific background, especially in biological sciences I loved this book. People are complaining it’s written at an eighth grade reading level, but that’s the point - it’s written so that someone without a science background can understand it. Brusatte is an expert in his field and his being able to make these concepts understandable to the lay is a testament to that expertise.

The book goes through the entirety of dinosaur evolution - from the mass extension as the end of the Cambrian, to the dinosauromorphs of the Triassic, to the sauropods of the Jurassic, an entire chapter deals with the evolution of T. Rex, the evolution of dinosaurs in Asia, the americas, and Europe, are the evolution of dinosaurs into birds, and the extinction of the dinosaurs.

It is well worth the read.

This excellent book manages to take the science of dinosaurs and turn it into two fascinating stories. First, the evolution and lives of dinosaurs themselves, and second, the story of dinosaur hunters, those intrepid paloentologists who have flushed out the facts of these most fascinating creatures. Highly recommended.

I *loved* this book! I thought Dr. Brusatte did a wonderful job explaining the science behind what we know of the dinosaurs, and I especially loved how he credited all of the scientists behind the work. He really let the scientists shine for themselves. I learned so, from how sauropods were able to get so large to how T. rex used its teeth in a puncture and pull bite. I highly recommend this book for science lovers of all types!

Steve Brusettes The Rise and Fall of the Dinosaurs is a wonderfully crafted kinesthetic description of modern day bird ancestors. As I listened, I could almost see and feel the crusty skeletons of those marvelous creatures. I;ve done the auditory version. I plan on buying the kindle version.

Even if you are not interested in science or paleontology, this is a great book. Steve explains things well, why they are important and has an engaging and creative writing style that makes the book very accessible for all readers. I am not kidding, I was sad when I started reading the last chapter and was reminded that (spoiler alert) they were all going to die. Just an excellent book for adults and kids interested in ANY science over 12/13.

Can't wait until his next book.

Steve Brusatte's expertise and enthusiasm make this book informative and lively. His view from inside the international community of dinosaur experts is inspiring, and his descriptions of dinosaurs and of carefully selected events in their history are vivid and dramatic. Some of the cultural uses our species has made of the dinosaurs also are treated with insight and verve. An irony of "Fall of" in the book's title is that the author makes his subject matter soar.

This book is outstanding! If you have even the slightest interest in dinosaurs or natural history, you will love this book. Dr. Brusatte's writing style is very approachable; so, even as he delivers a wealth of information, he does so in a clear and compelling way that educates the reader, without being overwhelming. The book also presents an interesting and fun mix of science and Dr. Brusatte's personal journey with paleontology--which provides a neat human element to the work.

An extremely comprehensive, well-crafted, and passionate journey through the life, times, history, and study of dinosaurs. I was particularly impressed by the chapters on the Triassic and the extinction of the dinosaurs (two subjects that even as a lifelong dinosaur lover, I generally have a hard time getting into), as well as the life of Franz Nopsca. An absolute must for anyone even slightly curious about dinosaurs (and T. rex in particular).

I've been a dinosaur enthusiast since I was six years old and this book has rekindled that passion. The book is well written, a fun read, and shows not only the state of paleontology knowledge today but also provides insights into the scientists continuing the quest for knowledge about dinosaurs. The science is in good hands. The narrative on the evolution of dinosaurs through the Mesozoic and to today's only living dinosaurs (birds) was fascinating and provided insights not presented outside the classroom or text books. This book will leave you wanting to learn more as it has spurred me to continue learning more through online courses and other readings.

This book which purports to tell all about the dinosaurs is really about the rise of Steve Brusatte, a young American paleontologist who teaches in Scotland. Mr Brusatte seems to be talented and well informed, but he is so clearly the star of this narrative that dinosaurs—mighty as they are—shrink in comparison. In his retelling, almost every discovery is somehow related to him and his life, almost every scientist his personal friend, with whom he has shared food and drink and a day's or week's trekking through the outback. Perhaps this autobiographical style was suggested by his publisher who wanted to see the book's scientific fabric embroidered by anecdotes. Whoever thought of it, Mr Brusatte embraces the end result, and his gee whiz style of writing often trivializes the subject matter. I learned a good deal from this book. Mr Brusatte knows his stuff. But, despite its title, this book falls short of being the best overview of the history of dinosaurs.

This is a great book about dinosaurs for all ages. Very well written and easily read. The only suggestion I would make (if there is hopefully a second or more illustrated edition) is more illustrations (e,g,, when interesting species are named, i.e., Pareiasaurs, Dicynodonts, Gorgonopsians, Nyasaurus, Rotodactylus, Sphingopus, Parachirotherium, Atreipus, etc., how about a picture?)

Loved this book by Steve Brusatte. Well written and the story lines led to a credible conclusion. It made me want to spend more time time hunting for fossils instead of becoming a fossil by sitting around.
It's an intriguing book and well worth the time to read it.

Steve does a great job explaining the dinosaur saga from beginning to abrupt end. A logical and well ordered summation of all the fieldwork done from the first dino discovery right through the last frenetic fifteen years. Steve obviously enjoys his work and appreciates his colleagues. Watching the arrival of the Chixulub asteroid through the eyes of T.rex was riveting! You will enjoy this read. I was gobsmacked!

If you would like a shallow overview of the current state of dinosaur paleontology, this book is for you. If you would like to read about a university professor who thinks of himself as a non-violent, modern day Indiana Jones, this book is for you.

If you want to read about all of the author's "cool" professional acquaintances scattered over the world from China to Portugal to the Navajo Indian reservation, and are thrilled to read about how they drink beer after fossil hunting, then you will be enthralled.

If, however, you are like me, you will find yourself skipping over the author's frequent paragraphs lauding himself and his friends, then you will find yourself jumping over half the text. What you will end up reading will be interesting, but the author seems to take great care to make sure that he does not get too technical. Evidently, he thinks that readers of popular science don't want to strain their minds. The end result is that you will learn little more from this book than you could gather from a couple of hours looking at Wikipedia articles.

One of the best nonfiction authors of our era - a fascinating review of the truer-than-fiction story of the rise and fall of the most famous beasts to ever live on Earth! Told with such skill at storytelling that readers don’t even realize that they’re learning, not only about paleontology but also about today's men and women who trek the world's 7 continents studying these incredible beasts out in the field and in labs, universities, and museums. Everyone should buy this book - be you a dinosaur lover, novice, adventurer, reader of travel books, or a simple fan of great storytelling. This might just be the best popular science book of our generation!

This book is easy to read, with lots of behind the scene stories that I really enjoyed.
I bought this one in Japan, and I loved the international version of the book cover (green background with a red tyrannosaur).
Huge congratulations to Dr. Brusatte.

I purchased this book on Audible and returned it unfinished. I only made it through the first couple of chapters, before returning it sorely disappointed and pretty disgusted. It seems to be largely given over to in detailed descriptions of his idols and friends in the paleontology field. It's written in a chatty and non-scientific writing style, with little if any scientific rigor.

I was also pretty disgusted that a 'scientist' thought it a good idea to add a story about the host at a conference, "managing to get in an outrageous comment about the female scientists in the audience". I wonder what purpose this aside served. It speaks of an attitude towards his female colleagues that does not deserve to be supported by buying his book.

I'd encourage anyone considering this to read the other one star reviews for details behind my rating. I'm going to search for another audio book offering on this topic from an author that appreciates readers who truly love the science explained for an educated, but non-specialist audience, and leaves out the human 'interest (?)' trivia. I became a scientist because my parents bought me a copy of "Age of the Dinosaurs" when I was 5, but I have specialized elsewhere and would love a good update.

Yes, Spielberg was right about the speed of a T. rex in JURASSIC PARK. But not so according to the author of this book. On page 210 Steve Brussate warns us "don't believe the movie magic" in the film's scene wherein a T. rex "chases down a jeep driving at highway speeds"and our author further pontificates that in the scene 'the real T. rex likely would have been left in the dust once the jeep got up into third gear." But this is precisely what happens in the movie! The T. rex is, indeed, left in the dust once the jeep kicks into third gear! To say the dinosaur 'chases down a jeep' is simply not accurate, either. It chases after the jeep, but doesn't chase it down. Our author also argues that the maximum speed of a T. rex "was probably in the ballpark of ten to twenty-five miles per hour. That's faster than we can run, but it's not as quick as...a car on an open road." When the Richard Attenborough character is asked about dino speed, he says that they clocked the T. rex at 32 miles per hour - which is not so far off from our author's estimate. So our author got it wrong. Now, I am not trying to be picayune about this. The point I am making is that if our author can get this easily verified bit of info wrong, what else may he have gotten wrong in his reconstruction of the much more difficult to verify THE RISE AND FALL OF THE DINOSAURS? I know a lot about movies, but not being a paleontologist I don't know as much about dinosaurs. So this troubles me some.

Being an artist, I am also troubled by the design of the book itself. There are 24 identical full pages of, apparently, a faint image of a tree and a sauropod on a grey background that preface each of the book's sections. 24 redundancies of wasted page that could have been used much more beautifully with more and better illustrations than the majority of those which are in the book. There are too many pictures of fieldwork and friends and past generations of paleontologists and skeletal headshots - and not near enough of the "lost world" the book is arguably about. The great Zallinger mural at Yale University is discussed in some interesting length - yet the photo of it is blocked by more bones. Why? Another irksome thing, as mentioned by other reviewers, are the truly boring descriptions of the various paleontologist players we meet throughout the book. One last quibble: on page 269 our author condescendingly writes about popular dinosaur reconstructions that they are "obnoxious animatronic things you see at amusement parks." He doesn't tell us why they are "obnoxious things" by his lights. I would think that anything that might ignite a young mind to a fascination - or fear - or both, of dinosaurs would be a good thing. I thought our author would have felt likewise.

The book has its merits - mainly the T. rex chapter (despite its misread of JURASSIC PARK), the bird chapter and the final one on the death of the dinosaurs. The book, however, is not by any stretch the last word on the "lost world."

Very disappointing. Though the author is an expert, the biology in the book is at an eighth-grade level.. There is a galling amount of padding, such as biographies of paleontologists the author knows, and descriptions of towns, of landscapes, or the difficulty in catching the right train. in China. I have the audible verrsion and kept puttin the speed of reading to two-and-a-half to get through these passages, thinking, "Please, please tell me something about dinosaurs that a moderately scientifically informed reader would not already know. There was some, but not much, of this. Good book for a smart kid in early high school.

This book is written in a rather juvenile grammatical style. The authoritative tone of the text as well as the rampant unsupported speculation nicely illustrates why the field of vertebrate palaeontology is among the weakest of the natural sciences. The weak prose detracts from the more serious issues that Brusatte attempts to cover. He refers to the iconic early bird Archaeopteryx as Huxley’s Frankenstein creature (!), but even Huxley saw it as a bird in the modern sense: “The leg and foot, the pelvis, the shoulder-girdle, and the feathers . . . Are completely those of existing ordinary birds “(1868). Aside from the low level of prose, much of the text is devoid of anything new, and much of the discussion, especially the section “dinosaurs take flight” is simply incorrect or highly biased and speculative. For example the fibers on the small Chinese theropod Sinosauropteryx are clearly not protofeathers (Proc Royal Soc 2007, 274:1823-29), and the work he lauds by Vinther has been largely disputed because, as P. Manning (U Manchester) showed, the microscopy-based melanosome studies only account for about 1% of the animal, and newer technologies such as synchroton-based chemical imaging provide superior tools (Manning, Edwards, et al (2013). J Anal At Spectrom, 2(7):1024-30). Brusatte fails to note that Sinosauropteryx was covered by small dinosaurian tuberculated scales, Not protofeathers. Too, studies on the colour of Sinosauropteryx have been firmly demolished (J Orn 2010)- The evolution of the feather: Sinosauropteryx, a colorful tail). He refers to Anchiornis (an early bird) as a troodontid dinosaur, but it is clearly an archaeopterygid (Bull AMNH 2018). Yi qi and its close kin Epidendrosaurus are considered very close to avian ancestry, but are devoid of dinosaurian skeletal features, and no references are noted. He ignores important evidence from claw studies by Derek Yalden (U. Manchester) which show beyond question that Archaeopteryx (& therefore many early birds) were trunk-climbers and tree dwellers. He still believes that oviraptorosaurs are dinosaurs, but there are more than a dozen papers, including important cladistic analyses by highly distinguished scientists that show the basal Caudipteryx and its ovirap cousins to be secondarily flightless birds (Maryańska, Osmólska, and Wolsan (2002). Avialan status for Oviraptorosauria. Acta Palaeontologica Polonica 47(1):97-116 & James and Pourtless (2009) Orn Monographs, no. 66). Therefore the aerodynamically perfection of the avian pennaceous feather arose in a flight context, not as “evolutionary overkill” for display. The tone of certitude is unwarranted for such a speculative field; there are multiple supported explanations for almost every issue discussed, but these are summarily dismissed.To ignore important studies that are contrary to one’s views is not acceptable science; it is clearly a form of censorship.

The author notes that one of his mentors was termed by the Wall St. Journal “the coolest dude alive” — such a “clever” insertion erodes confidence in the field, and perhaps more than anything else defines the current level of dinosaurian palaeontology.

Total disappointment. Just one more of those narrative stories that have become fashionable lately. “I met up with so-and-so, we travelled to this remote area, found such-and-such, etc”. I did not seek out this book to read someone’s diary but to learn about a scientific subject that interests me. I have had similar experiences with other books on scientific topics. Instead of the author diving into the subject, we are taken on a journey, visiting this and that place, talking to such-and-such professor, and so on ad infinitum. This is definitely not the reason I search out books on science.

The author talks a lot about himself but he adds plenty of dinosaur stories too. I got this for my oldest grandson who is dino-mad. He is not old enough to read it by himself but his parents are willing to read it to him and Nana does too. One of these days, this "chapter book" won't be so intimidating and he will read it for himself.

Readable, without skimping on scientific rigor. This allows one to make sense of - what else? - the rise and fall of dinosaurs. The author combines personal anecdotes and recent scientific discoveries to make a superb volume.

Loving this book. For anyone who at any time in their lives fell in love with dinosaurs, this is the book for you. Steve Brusatte is the perfect guide on this intellectual adventure tale filled with fantastic beasts and lost worlds ... all true, based on the most cutting edge research. There's something fascinating on every page. It's also gorgeously and generously illustrated. Buy it!

Robsessed with dinosaurs and robsessed with this book! I learned so many facts—from eccentric dinosaur experts to ways dinosaurs evolved—that I had never heard before. Flipped through this thing faster than it took that asteroid to wipe out dinosaurs (which, geologically speaking, was pretty fast).

The book is exciting and informative.....very well written and holds your interest!! You don't have to be a scientist to understand the evolution of these creatures and what Earth was like when dinosaurs ruled.

It was very readable thanks to the author’s style. I learned many things that debunked facts I had previously held. I would have liked many more pictures (simulated) of the many dinosaurs mentioned.

This is the most up to date history of dinosaurs that currently exists. It is well-written, but calling it an easy read is a disservice to the author since it does thoroughly cover the processes used by paleontologists and geologists as they have "uncovered" this history of dinosaurs. Another rewarding and informing aspect of the book is its John McPhee-like emphasis on personal side of the various scientists who made and are making discoveries about dinosaurs.