“Fascinating . . . Surprising entertainment, combining deep learning with dad jokes . . . [Schutt] is a natural teacher with an easy way with metaphor.The Wall Street Journal

In this lively, unexpected look at the heartsof animalsfrom fish to bats to humansAmerican Museum of Natural History zoologistBill Schutt tells an incredible story ofevolution and scientific progress.

We join Schutt on a tour from the originsof circulation, still evident in microorganismstoday, to the tiny hardworking pumpsof worms, to the golf-cart-size hearts of bluewhales. We visit beaches where horseshoecrabs are being harvested for their blood,which has properties that can protect humansfrom deadly illnesses. We learn thatwhen temperatures plummet, some froghearts can freeze solid for weeks, resumingtheir beat only after a spring thaw. And wejourney with Schutt through human history,too, as philosophers and scientists hypothesize,often wrongly, about what makes ourticker tick. Schutt traces humanitys cardiacfascination from the ancient Greeks andEgyptians, who believed that the heart containsthe soul, all the way up to modern-daylaboratories, where scientists use animalhearts and even plants as the basis for manyof todays cutting-edge therapies.

Written with verve and authority, weavingevolutionary perspectives with cultural history,Pump shows us this mysterious organ ina completely new light.