A review of three recent books on the origin of life by Antonio Lazcano in the American Scientist.

Life on a Young Planet, by paleontologist Andrew Knoll, focuses on the first three billion years of biological history on our planet, with considerable emphasis on the information provided by the fossil record. By contrast, physicist Fred Adams and geneticist Paul F. Lurquin attempt in their respective books to describe more grandiose schemes: They start with physics and the Big Bang, continue through the origin of life on Earth and conclude, almost inevitably, with chapters on the purpose of it all.
Origins of Existence: How Life Emerged in the Universe by Fred Adams (The Free Press, 2002, forthcoming in paper in October from Pi Press under a new title, Our Living Multiverse).

Life on a Young Planet: The First Three Billion Years of Evolution on Earth by Andrew H. Knoll (Princeton University Press, 2003).

The Origins of Life and the Universe by Paul F. Lurquin (Columbia University Press, 2003).

(At the bottom of the review you'll find a citation from Camus, which I find completely misstaken in an evolutionary context.)