harvard scientists have a place in the sun when it comes to biology. And with mentors like E O Wilson, the university faculty has a particularly tough act to follow. Stephen Palumbi a professor of biology and a relative newcomer to Harvard has, however, overcome any such limitation to produce a brilliant follow-up to Wilson's work. The book convinces that evolution is a fact, not a theory: a process that may manifest its effect in a few generations rather than spanning millions of years. By manipulating genes and rewriting the laws of natural selection, human actions have accelerated the evolutionary game. This is particularly evident among the species that live close to us, the animals we domesticate or devour, the pests that share the food we grow, and the microbes that surprise us by rapidly changing the very nature of the disease they cause.

Last few decades have made it amply clear that evolution can take place much more rapidly than Darwin ever imagined. Ever since penicillin was introduced in 1943 and declared a silver bullet, humans have haphazardly used antibacterial agents in soaps, face washes, cosmetics and even drugs, unaware that the war against bacteria was only just beginning. For most part, therefore, the author talks on the microbial evolution: the aids virus, the bacteria that cause tuberculosis and others responsible for some common infections.

The book begins with a trip to Hawaii to secure some rare snails for captive breeding