Overall I enjoyed At the Waters Edge much more than I enjoyed Endless Forms. I thought that Zimmers book was a much more interesting read. Since the author presented it as a story, it makes the new fossil discoveries much more exciting. There are characters. We learn little personal facts about the scientist we hear about rather than just names and dates. For me, this makes remembering the names and dates more interesting. I also enjoyed the way the book focused on one category. While it was a broad category, by the end I thought it was all tied together nicely. I especially liked the X analogy. Describing how terrestrial animals were sliding down one side toward the sea, and aquatic creatures were crawling up the other side onto dry land. While smaller aspects of development were discussed in the book, they all related to the topic expressed in the title.
Personally, I did not enjoy Carrolls book as much. I found the level of explaination awkward. I thought for some chapters, there was too much explaination of some very general biological concepts, while in other chapters it seemed assumed the reader was an well educated biologist. I enjoyed much more the personal stories that Carroll put into the book and the data presented that was collected from his own lab. Perhaps this should be a signal to myself that I enjoy storybooks rather than pop-science.