Hi dubstepped. Sorry if I am repeating stuff that has already been covered above.
Prothero very much focuses on the evidence for evolution from paleontology. He begins by defending his field from the false accusations made by creationists regarding the geological column and dating methods. It is full of great information - he has released a new volume recently - but for an introduction to biological evolution it's not a great choice.
The book list suggested by Anders is excellent but I would add "The Blind Watchmaker" by Dawkins.
I thought he was supposed to go into the primordial soup but he never even mentioned it.
Very few books on evolution also deal with the origin of life. Abiogenesis is a distinct field of study. There is some really good work being done at UCL (London) by Nick Lane and his team that is approaching the problem via bioenergetics. In other words where did the energy come from to fuel the transition from geochemistry to biochemistry? "Organic soup" is not a likely candidate. Creationists are not wrong when they say that you can spark a can of soup as long as you like but you will never get life. If you want to look further into this topic Nick Lane's "The Vital Question" is extremely interesting. Alternatively you could get "Life Arising" by the same author where you will get one chapter on this topic and nine on other fascinating aspects of evolution.
What I gather is that there are two types of evolution, micro and macro
These are not really phrases that would be used by most biologists. Changes in the frequency of particular versions of genes -alleles - accumulate over time. Deciding when micro becomes macro is very subjective. Obviously when a population has changed sufficiently that they can no longer interbreed with the parent species then an important line has been crossed. That can be a subtle as the difference between Herring Gulls and Lesser Black-backed Gulls or as startling as the gap between chimps and humans. It's all the same mechanisms at play.
Such evolution occurs due to environmental pressures or maybe some part of dna changing through reproduction. It is more likely to occur somewhere like on an island that is more isolated and where a change in one progeny is less likely to breed out due to a large population.
Yes. The key thing to remember is that nothing ever adapts to its environment. Rather a variety of genetic variation exists within a gene-pool. When changes happen in an environment in an isolated breeding group then some of those variations will confer a slight advantage. The frequency of that mutation will then become more common - or even ubiquitous - in that population.
Unlike the linear way that evolution was presented to us where an amphibian turns into a mammal that turns into a monkey and eventually a human (I butchered that), there were slight changes over time in chimps over time that led to us. There is only a small difference in dna between us and a chimp.
Just to clarify we and chimps both evolved from a common ancestor about 6 million years ago. Both lineages have been changing since then. The genetic difference is now about 1.5% but that means that our genome has only changed by about half that amount in that time.
I just can't seem to grasp how those different species evolved in the first place. I see that birds can evolve to have different characteristics, but are birds still evolving in a macro way into something as different as a dolphin is from a bird? Or if such a small genetic change as there is between a chip and a human creates such different creatures (we are quite different than a chimp even with 99% similarity in DNA), then why don't we see other large changes like that more?
Three things to sort out here. One is that a change of just a few percent in a genome is still an awful lot of changes. We have three billion base pairs in our genome. Most mutations happen in the non-coding region and has a neutral effect.
The other thing is to think about the genome more like a chemical formula or a recipe than a blueprint. A small change in a blueprint results in a small change in the building. A tiny change in chemical formula can have a radical change in the end result - be that a chemical compound or a sponge cake. Genes that build amino acids - that join up to build proteins - are unlikely to change much or often. There are lots of ways to make proteins that don't work but not so easy to make alternative ways to make ones that work better. However a significant part of genome are more like switches that turn on and off the production of proteins. A change in these parts of our genome can produce novel innovations. Think of it like the instructions for producing origami models. One change in the routine can make a real difference. In the nine months we were forming in the womb, cascades of genetic switches were turning on and off sculpting the embryo. This area of evolution is referred to as evolutionary developmental biology or 'evo-devo'. The most accessible books on this are by Sean B. Carroll (the biologist not the physicist by the same name) For example "Endless Forms Most Beautiful" and "The Making of thE Fittest".
The third point I want to make is about selective pressure. Life has evolved over millions of years to fill every possible niche on the planet. Having refined their design by natural selection there just isn't a strong pressure on most species to change. Some species look identical in the fossil record as their extant descendants. Remember evolution only cares about passing on genes. If our design is good enough to leave behind viable offspring its job is done. We might want to evolve the ability to run like a cheetah but evolution can't do it unless that increases our ability to find a mate and breed. That is also why we get so many genetic illnesses in old age. There is no evolutionary pressure to eradicate those from the gene-pool.
I hope that helps a little. Please feel free to ask more questions. It's really refreshing to see sincere questions about evolution for a change.