New discoveries are changing our understanding of human origins almost daily. What does the new knowledge about our species mean? Science writer Carl Zimmer tackles that question and more in this illuminating journey through our ancestry, beginning sixty-five million years ago with the first primates and ending today, as we enter a new phase of evolution. Along the way, he re-examines the major steps in human evolution, as hominids began to stand upright, fashion tolls and develop consciousness. What's most intriguing is that fossils are no longer our sole source of information about our origins. We can now read the story of where we came from in our own DNA.