LIFE BY DESIGN is a brief introduction to biology for non-major undergraduate students and advanced secondary level students. It departs from a tedious encyclopedic approach to biology in favor of stating and exemplifying 12 basic principles that describe all living things. Examples are taken from the everyday lives of students. This text is integrative of science and other disciplines, giving science a rich context in the non-major student's thinking. LIFE BY DESIGN invites the student to examine the origins of life forms from both a Darwinian and a design perspective and aids the reader in following the authors' analysis of these two perspectives.