Jungle: How Tropical Forests Shaped the World-and Us

From the age of dinosaurs to the first human cities, a groundbreaking new history of the planet that tropical forests made.

To many of us, tropical forests are the domain of movies and novels. These dense, primordial wildernesses are beautiful to picture, but irrelevant to our lives.

Jungle tells a different story. Archaeologist Patrick Roberts argues that tropical forests have shaped nearly every aspect of life on earth. They made the planet habitable, enabled the rise of dinosaurs and mamma...