This book is a testament as to just how much fun science can be. It is a true ‘boy's own’ adventure – full of thrills, chills, bad guys, terrible setbacks and eureka-moment discoveries. Colinvaux, however, does not just take the reader on a roller-coaster ride through his illustrious and exciting life in science but also shows how science works, using his own career as an example. He did not set out on his research programme in the Amazon to overturn a paradigm, but ended up spending much of his scientific life doing just that, something few scientists can claim to have done.