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The Drive to Order Life
In Every Living Thing, Jason Roberts traces the intertwined lives of two eighteenth-century naturalists who set out to name all of life on Earth: Carl Linnaeus in Sweden and Georges-Louis de Buffon in France. Linnaeus sought to impose order and hierarchy—giving us the terms mammal, primate, and Homo sapiens—while Buffon saw nature as restless and evolving. Their rivalry shaped the birth of modern biology and the way we continue to perceive and classify the living world.
We discovered this book in the shop of Berlin’s Museum of Natural History. The museum once bore the name of Alexander von Humboldt, the city’s great naturalist and explorer whose Kosmos sought to weave together all forms of knowledge. Beneath the vast Giraffatitan skeleton, Every Living Thing felt right at home—a reminder that the urge to name, order, and understand the world is as much about wonder as it is about power.
About the Author
Jason Roberts is the author of A Sense of the World: How a Blind Man Became History’s Greatest Traveler, a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award. His writing has also appeared in McSweeney’s and The Believer.
Details
2025
Published by Random House Trade Paperbacks
432 pages
Dimensions: 5-3/16 x 8”
Random House Trade Paperbacks, 2025
432 pages | 5⅜ × 8 in
The Drive to Order Life
In Every Living Thing, Jason Roberts traces the intertwined lives of two eighteenth-century naturalists who set out to name all of life on Earth: Carl Linnaeus in Sweden and Georges-Louis de Buffon in France. Linnaeus sought to impose order and hierarchy—giving us the terms mammal, primate, and Homo sapiens—while Buffon saw nature as restless and evolving. Their rivalry shaped the birth of modern biology and the way we continue to perceive and classify the living world.
We discovered this book in the shop of Berlin’s Museum of Natural History. The museum once bore the name of Alexander von Humboldt, the city’s great naturalist and explorer whose Kosmos sought to weave together all forms of knowledge. Beneath the vast Giraffatitan skeleton, Every Living Thing felt right at home—a reminder that the urge to name, order, and understand the world is as much about wonder as it is about power.
About the Author
Jason Roberts is the author of A Sense of the World: How a Blind Man Became History’s Greatest Traveler, a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award. His writing has also appeared in McSweeney’s and The Believer.
Details
2025
Published by Random House Trade Paperbacks
432 pages
Dimensions: 5-3/16 x 8”
Random House Trade Paperbacks, 2025
432 pages | 5⅜ × 8 in