A small digression on Nick Lane's book: I gifted myself The Vital Question in 2015 December. While Lane writes quite effectively without any mind-numbing jargon, the book still has quite a bit of technical chemistry (understandably). After the excellent first 80 pages, it took me a lot more will power to plough through. :-) (I paused at page 112 and never got back. Thanks to this reminder, I'll resume again.)

When I was reading the book on a plane, a seasoned biologist happened to be sitting next to me. When I said that it's the first book of Nick Lane that I picked up, he said: "I'd rather suggest you to pick up Laine's other book, Life Ascending, and then get back to The Vital Question."

(Edit: Oops, bad me, just noticed that there's already discussion about the book's accessibility in this thread.)