'The book brings a wealth of thought-provoking insights into how life developed on Earth, the mechanisms of its existence and destruction, and how we might direct our search for life in the future … This book successfully informs and inspires those students, professionals, and others with a curiosity about life in the Universe.' Astronomy Now '… a good book to dip into for information and be confident that a question will be covered somewhere.' The Observatory 'The numerous references at the end of each chapter are up-to-date and particularly welcome in this new multidisciplinary field where most of us are struggling to integrate information from half a dozen disciplines. … I'd recommend…Planets and Life for graduate students.' Journal of Geological Magazine 'It's not easy to unify a multidisciplinary field whose main focus (extraterrestrial life) may not exist, but this new astrobiology textbook pulls it off. … well-organised … the combination of details and big picture thinking embodied in this new text will go far to describe our current understanding of how we came to be and how we fit into the universe.' Geological Magazine '… an effective text book that deals nicely with the interdisciplinary nature of the field, moving fluently from philosophy to ethics to biochemistry.' Astrobiology Society of Britain