" The Origins of the New is a remarkable achievement. Erwin masterfully shows that novelty and innovation are distinct but deeply intertwined, creating a link between biology, culture, and technology. He explains how breakthroughs, from grasses to computers, transform the world only when the right conditions allow them to flourish. An essential book for anyone who wants to understand how the world changes." --Michael J. Mauboussin, Morgan Stanley Investment Management, author of The Success Equation "Douglas Erwin's The Origins of the New is a tour-de-force history of life through the lens of novelty and innovation. Sweeping and profound, it goes to the heart of what evolution is and how evolution really works, in both biology and culture." --Kyle Harper, author of Plagues Upon the Earth: Disease and the Course of Human History "This book is a profound meditation on the evolution of novelty.

Douglas Erwin shows how recent progress in paleontology, the evolution of development, and complexity science are challenging legacy perspectives and moving us toward new conceptions and new formalisms for the origin of adaptive spaces and dimensions." --David Krakauer, President and William H. Miller Professor of Complex Systems, Santa Fe Institute "Erwin displays an unparalleled command of the literature--from paleontology to gene regulatory networks, from ecological modeling to economic history--but wears his learning lightly while guiding the reader along the tangled road of biology's struggle to account for patterns of origination and understand the processes behind them in the history of life." --Alan C. Love, University of Minnesota "Douglas Erwin makes a persuasive case for how we should rethink the roles of novelty and innovation in much that is unique to Earth and humanity--how life has evolved and the arc of cultural and technological transformations. This book is a testament to the power of interdisciplinary scholarship between economics, biology, and anthropology." --Rachel Wood, University of Edinburgh.