LA Times Book Prize Finalist

“Ambitious, absorbing…Brannen is an effusive, maximalist writer, a mind vividly alive on the page…and his arguments, like his writing, are hugely compelling. " 
—The New York Times

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

“What I suspect will be an enduring volume...[A} superb geologic history. " 
—Bill McKibben, The New York Review of Books

“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, he shows, absolutely all life rests — with growing, and unnerving, precarity." 
—David Wallace-Wells, New York Times bestselling author of The Uninhabitable Earth

“Comprehensive and compelling...it regularly evokes a sense of child-like wonder." 
—New Scientist

“The climate science (and also possibly economic and thermodynamic) book of the year." 
—Robinson Meyer, Executive Editor of Heatmap

“A thrilling exploration of Earth’s tumultuous history, its tenuous present, and a future in grave doubt." 
—Kirkus Reviews

“What a brilliant and epic book this is! From the magical transformation of CO2 into the first life to our current flailing attempts to pump less of it into our atmosphere, Brannen gives us a sweeping history of the planet in a single molecule. 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. This book is a collection of wonderful things woven together into a fascinating, terrifying whole." 
—Kate Marvel, climate scientist and author of Human Nature

“Peter Brannen offers a completely new vision of Earth and human history that will change your perspective forever. One vital, misunderstood molecule is revealed as the animating force behind everything that has ever happened on this planet—from the assembly of microscopic plankton seashells to the rise and fall of human empires. If we are smart, this impressive, beautifully written book will be a lodestar for the current generation’s most important decisions." 
—Rebecca Boyle, author of Our Moon

“Urgent and astounding…With the lyricism of John McPhee and scientific bona fides rivalling any academic geologist, Brannen is in a class of his own as the preeminent scribe of Earth science today. This is the book that I want all of my Earth science students to read, and every policymaker and politician too." 
—Steve Brusatte, University of Edinburgh paleontologist and New York Times/Sunday Times bestselling author of The Rise and Fall of the Dinosaurs

In The Story of CO2 Is the Story of Everything, award-winning science journalist Peter Brannen reveals how carbon dioxide’s movement through rocks, air, water, and life has kept our planet’s climate livable, its air breathable, and its oceans hospitable to complex life. Starting at the dawn of life almost 4 billion years ago, and working all the way up through today’s global climate crisis and beyond, he illuminates how CO2 has been responsible for the planet’s many deaths and rebirths, for shaping the evolution of life, and for the development of modern human society. And he argues that it’s only by reckoning with this deep planetary history that we can understand the cosmic stakes of our current moment on Earth—and how dangerous our experiment with the climate really is.

With groundbreaking research and a sweeping perspective, Brannen shows how a deep exploration of the carbon cycle across our planet’s history can shed light on the way forward for humanity, as we try to avert environmental catastrophe in the future. And it all begins with a richer understanding of the critical role of CO2 in our world.