Asimov is most famous as a science fiction author, with good reason as he contributed some of the classic works of the genre: Foundation, The Caves of Steel and others. However, Asimov was probably a better science writer than science fiction writer. His straightforward and simple style translates better to conveying useful information than it does to creating eloquent fictional prose. The Wellsprings of Life is a basic guide to biology and evolution. There isn't really anything here that one would not learn in a well-run high school biology class, there wasn't anything I hadn't seen before and I never progressed beyond high school biology. There were details I didn't remember (after all, how many people who don't go on to work in some biology-related field remember the names of the various phases of cell division), but there wasn't anything that I could not pick up quickly.