The Story of Birds

A New Scientist and Times most anticipated book of 2026

Billions of birds share the planet with us. With their flamboyant plumage and joyous dawn serenades, many of them are impossible to miss. But how did they get here, how did they break the bounds of Earth and begin to fly, and how does their legacy shape our world?

In delightfully energetic prose, expert palaeontologist Steve Brusatte takes us through their 150-million-year history, from their origins among small carnivorous dinosaurs to the 10,000-plus species that thrive today. Along the way, we meet fantastic birds from all around the world, some known only through fossils. There are elephant birds that stand as high as a basketball hoop and lay eggs as big as watermelons; demon ducks that weigh more than cows; aeroplane-sized seabirds that soar the world’s thermals; and predatory penguins the size of gorillas.

Lively, majestic and full of wonder, The Story of Birds will ensure you never see birds the same way again.

Review

Soaringly brilliant . . . a fascinating, scintillating flight through the history and biology of some of the most incredible creatures on our planet . . . a tour de force -- Alice Roberts

Steve Brusatte takes us on an eye-opening tour into the amazing world of birds, from their origins as the living descendants of dinosaurs to their remarkable cognitive and navigational skills. A thrilling addition to his hugely successful earlier books, The Rise and Fall of the Dinosaurs and The Rise and Reign of the Mammals -- Venki Ramakrishnan, Nobel Prize-winning author of Why We Die

An authoritative and endlessly illuminating journey through the evolution of birds -- from their dinosaur roots in the Triassic to the hummingbird at your feeder. As one of the world's top paleontologists, as well as one of the finest science communicators working today, no one is better positioned to tell this epic and surprising story than Steve Brusatte. An instant classic. Anyone interested in the story of life on Earth needs this on their bookshelf -- Peter Brannen, author of The Story of Co2 is the Story of Everything

Brusatte weaves cutting-edge science and vivid storytelling to give us a breathtaking account of one of evolution's greatest survivors -- Neil Shubin, author of Your Inner Fish

What a sensational book! Crisp, gripping, science writing at its very best. If you love birds, you will love this captivating story of how they came to be -- Jennifer Ackerman, author of The Genius of Birds

Brimming with surprises, The Story of Birds reveals evolution as a restless tinkerer and birds as its most radical experiment . . . The birds around us [are] living records of a history far stranger, tougher, and more inventive than we assume. Clear, incisive, and quietly surprising, The Story of Birds makes it impossible to see the natural world the same way ever again -- Hakeem Oluseyi, author of A Quantum Life

A brilliant history of how birds evolved, with an astonishing insight on every page -- Stephen Moss, author of Ten Birds That Changed the World

Hold the front page – dinosaurs did NOT go extinct! They are all around us, and there are more of them than ever. They tweet! They squawk! They trill! They coo! They cluck! They shriek! Yes, they are the birds, and in The Story of Birds Steve Brusatte tells their amazing story with enthusiasm and brio -- Henry Gee, author of the award-winning A (Very) Short History of Life on Earth

About the Author

Professor Steve Brusatte is a palaeontologist on the faculty of the School of GeoSciences at the University of Edinburgh in Scotland. He grew up in the Midwestern United States and has a BSc in Geophysical Sciences from the University of Chicago, MSc in Palaeobiology from the University of Bristol, and PhD in Earth and Environmental Sciences from Columbia University in New York.

Steve is widely recognized as one of the leading palaeontologists of his generation. He has written over two hundred peer-reviewed scientific papers during his twenty years of research in the field, named and described over a dozen new species of dinosaurs and mammals, and led groundbreaking studies on how dinosaurs rose to dominance and went extinct, and how birds evolved from carnivorous dinosaurs closely related to Tyrannosaurus and Velociraptor.