A book which presents a panoramic view of the whole of life, unlike the normal school textbook, which divides life into a number of categories - plants, bacteria, mammals, birds, reptiles and amphibians. Each chapter is devoted to a single principle, for example, Patterns lays out 16 rules that life uses to build, organize, recycle and recreate itself; Energy explains how all life-forms make and use energy; Machinery illustrates the mechanics of life; Community demonstrates how we combine to succeed; Information shows how DNA's instructions are passed from one generation to the next; Feedback explains how living things provide themselves with what they need; and Evolution shows how life changes and adapts. Offering information about the way life grows, develops, reproduces and survives, this book provides an unusual approach to the mystery of life.