The Story of CO₂ is the Story of Everything A Planetary Experiment

"Urgent and astounding [...] Brannen weaves together the entire history of Earth, and the origins and tribulations of life over billions of years, with the predicament we find ourselves in today [...] Brannen is in a class of his own"
– Steve Brusatte, Sunday Times bestselling author of The Rise and Fall of the Dinosaurs

"As with everything Peter Brannen writes, this is fascinating; deep history brought vividly to life. But it's also crucial – our ability to understand and act on it will determine how the next period in earth's history unfolds"
– Bill McKibben, author Here Comes the Sun

"A moving and magisterial tribute to the magic-seeming chemical interplay of air and rock, plant kingdom and ocean expanse, which scientists dryly call the 'carbon cycle.' Upon it, Brannen shows, absolutely all life rests – with growing, and unnerving, precarity"
– David Wallace-Wells, New York Times bestselling author of The Uninhabitable Earth

"A completely new vision of Earth and human history that will change your perspective forever"
– Rebecca Boyle, author of Our Moon

"What a brilliant and epic book this is! I study this stuff for a living and still learned so much – how coal nearly froze the planet, why the rocks beneath our feet allow us to breathe, and the origins of our modern industrial world"
– Kate Marvel, author of Human Nature

"A grand tour of billions of years of history [...] Brannen elegantly moves through the Earth's epochs"
– Daily Mail

"An engaging story of the entire history of our planet [...] Brannen deftly weaves his narrative, bringing to life the story of CO₂ and its importance to all life forms [...] . Worlds practically unimaginable to the reader because of their remoteness are vividly described [...] This book regularly evokes a kind of child-like wonder – and does so for a subject that is so completely woven into our everyday life that we take it for granted"
– New Scientist

"This is history on a heroic scale [...] Brannen has a gift for translating recondite scientific facts into gorgeous psychedelic passages that verge on pure poetry"
– The Times

"This ambitious, absorbing book begins with the origins of life and stretches through the rise of human civilization and technology [...] While Brannen doesn't shy away from the fearsome shape of our future, he finds ample joy in this deep-time journey, unafraid to puncture his expertise with gob-smacked wonder [...] Brannen is a mind vividly alive on the page [and] his arguments, like his writing, are compelling"
– New York Times