[Allocator2008]

The only book anyone, human or alien, really needs to read is -

"On the Origin of Species by means of Natural Selection"

by Charles Darwin, 1859.

"The Selfish Gene" by Richard Dawkins, 1974 is a good appendum there as well but once mastering "Origin" one really has the basics one needs.

[icey]

While I think it's safe to say that we are a planet full of evolved lifeforms; it seems a bit narrow minded to me to suggest that all potential visitors we could meet would also have evolved.

What precludes an "intelligently designed" being from being the first non-terrestrial life-form we encounter?

For all the talk we have here about the Singularity, I would assume that the first signs of life from Earth that any other civilization would meet would probably be something engineered by man. (Assuming we're meeting them somewhere other than our solar system.)