This was my 2nd reading of PSS because it was very good (even though I understand it needs updating but how can a book written 18 years ago be “updated” when so much has changed since then?)  I know I didn’t get it all but it was quite interesting as well as nicely written. The second reading of science books is almost always clearer for me.  It still takes comparatively heavy mental work on my part, though.  

Power, Sex, Suicide:
Mitochondria and the Meaning of Life 
By Nick Lane
2005 – 524 pages
Read by Nigel Patterson – 15h 54m
Rating:  9.8:  life science 
(Both read and listened) 

Lane is giving the reader a fairly thorough (I think) rundown on Mitochondria,  what they are, what they do, and why they do it. As the title suggests, they’re important to the power, sex and suicide of cells.  And as it so happens, mitochondria are the result of a once-in-a-cosmos event (seriously – a singularity) to created the “powerhouse of the cell.”  He tells us on page 9 that “The acquisition of mitochondria was the pivotal moment in the history of life.”

And I thoroughly enjoy the style Lane uses – he regularly anthropomorphizes the cell or its parts so that we read “The dream of every living cell is to become two cells… ” (p 470)  This makes the whole book much less dry and in fact, an actual pleasure to read. I think it was Lane’s style, tone and organization which had me read this book twice!   

And even for all that I doubt I could summarize it.  Let’s just say that one lowly bacteria of a certain type found anther one of a different type and absorbed it creating a powerhouse of cellular energy with two-party reproduction, but ages and dies as well.  That lowly bacteria now had a nucleus and other organelles including the mitochondria which could only be passed on via the female.  😁