There is no mystery about why life seems to violate entropy, and it has been well understood since the concept of entropy was invented. Did Schroeder imagine that the biologists didn't know that?
Life doesn't violate entropy. The entropy within a living cell decreases at the expense of increased entropy outside of it.
On the contrary, I've heard that entropy is a useful lens through which to understand the biological processes behind life. We're used to thinking of living things as processing energy: ingesting high energy food, distributing it, making it into forms that do useful work (e.g. ATP). Apparently (I don't know the details, but this was from a biologist) it's also useful to view it as processing entropy. Ingesting low entropy food, distributing it, making it useful, excreting high entropy waste and heat. A gradient from low entropy inputs to high entropy outputs.
"Life is fire, slowed down, with an attitude"
What is the source of this? Many years ago I wrote an honors essay for some undergrad class that built on the same observation, although I needed to run with it for a dozen pages or so to satisfy page count expectations.
Sorry, I've completely forgotten the source, but I'm pretty sure it was extant before 2000, if that helps...