Life in Space: Astrobiology for Everyone
by Lucas John Mix
Harvard, 344 pages, $29.95

Mix is an Episcopal priest with a Ph.D. in biology from Harvard, and the new chaplain at Arizona State University. His religious credentials are secure. Equally so is his scientific work. The origins of life touch on matters of religion, inevitably. “As a Christian,” he writes, “I think of astrobiology as a way to better understand how God created the world.” In this book, then, he sticks to epistemology—what science believes it knows and why it believes it. He asks more than he answers: What is life, what does it mean, and what is our place in it all? This is very satisfying reading.

—Russell E. Saltzman