The Illusion of Design

Understanding the World Through Science

We look at the eye, the wing, the living cell, and something in us says: this cannot be an accident. The feeling is real. The conclusion it points toward is not.

The Illusion of Design explains, clearly and without condescension, why the world appears designed when it is not — and why that appearance is so difficult to shake. Drawing on physics, biology, geology, and cognitive science, Robert W. Jansen traces the full arc of the scientific case: from deep time and the origin of life through evolution and the fossil record to DNA and the architecture of the human mind itself.

This is not a book about what to believe. It is a book about how science works, what it has found, and why the findings are more wonderful than any alternative.

$11.99 / $19.99 ($20.99 SE) Hardcover

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The Restless Planet

From the Big Bang to Tomorrow

We stand on solid ground and feel nothing move. The rock beneath our feet seems permanent, the air above us eternal, the world around us stable and given. None of it is.

The Restless Planet tells the story of the Earth across its full four-and-a-half-billion-year history — from the supernova that forged its atoms to the ice ages, mass extinctions, and long chain of contingencies that eventually produced us. Drawing on geology, biology, astronomy, and chemistry, Robert W. Jansen places the reader in each moment of deep time: breathing the air, feeling the ground, looking at a sky no human eye has ever seen.

This is not a book about where the Earth is going. It is a book about where it has been — and why that story is more astonishing than anything we could have invented.

$11.99 / $19.99 Hardcover