I picked this book up after becoming fascinated with the quantum world, as painted by Roger Penrose in his 2 terrific books on its relevance to consciousness. This book does briefly cover consciousness towards the end, but is mainly about the role of quantum effects on evolution, which I was eager to understand. I found the book fairly easy going, nothing too technical, and it should be suitable for people not in the science discipline. A lot of what is in this book, while being interesting, was not new to me. Of the bits that were new, the authors opinions on how adaptive evolution occurs through quantum coherance was the least credible. He supposes quantum coherence affects DNA, and replicating molecules, to guide evolution, I found this, while not being completely untenable in theory, to be very unlikely, based on the overwhelming number of factors which would be constantly causing decoherance in such a dynamic system as a cell. The other thing which was new to me was the quantum Zeno effect, which was interesting, but again, I think his theory of its involvement is wrong. There is some good popular science material in here, and I'm sure many light readers would enjoy the book for it's content, but for the serious reader I don't think it will provide enough. The revolutionary ideas that try to expose the hidden side of evolution are, I think, while interesting, wrong. The bit about consciousness is short, though better, and does not redeem the book. The book will serve as a good introduction into quantum physics to those who have a biological leaning, but there is nothing too in depth or new, or correct, for those with an existing understanding in both fields. ( )

Last sentence: "Life and consciousness are quantum phenomena." But McFadden's way of using quantum theory to discuss consciousness is not the same as that of Roger Penrose. The first two-thirds of the book is on basic aspects of biology and quantum mechanics.