i wanted to learn about the noosphere, the sphere of human thought introduced by Pierre Teilhard de Chardin in 1922 in his Cosmogenesis. As a Jesuit, he fought the Vatican and the Jesuit authorities in writing about Darwin, evolution and the Bible, fitting it all together. Much of his writing on philosophy and religion is still locked away as "classified" by the Vatican and not available to the public. The scenarist priest was exiled to China as punishment but there he led an expedition that found Peking Man and some of the oldest group of fossil specimens of Homo erectus dated from roughly 680,000–780,000 years ago. Author, Amir D. Aczel successfully traces the life of an amazing rebel.

If I could give this book another half-star I would... it's the intriguing biography of Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, a real French Jesuit priest and scientist who has no problem reconciling his love of God with the theory of evolution, although everyone else in the world seems to have a major problem with it--and seems bent on ruining his life, just because. At times sublime, at times utterly infuriating (especially if you're a dissenting Catholic who is baffled by arguments that global warming and evolution are just a bunch of fakery cooked up by this weird cult called Science).

The subject matter was really fascinating, but the book never seemed to know what it was about--it wandered too far to be about Teilhard de Chardin's role in the Peking Man situation, but it was too focused to be a biography.