Book excerpt: "But you must not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil for when you eat of it, you will surely die" (Gen. 2:17). Why would God put that troublesome tree in the Garden of Eden? He must have known the childlike Adam and Eve would give in to temptation, especially with that old serpent slithering around. Maybe that was the divine plan from the start for what would be the most interesting saga: an endless summer of Adam and family playing with docile lions and feasting on low-hanging fruit or a tortuous slog through centuries that eventually lifted humanity from hunter-gatherers to astronauts. This little book attempts to offer an alternate view of Satan in which he was not only a vengeful rebel against the cosmic divine will but unwittingly served as the restless, malcontented spark that ignited much of human progress through the ages.