I like Lane's book, but it is annoying how he praises Bill Martin and basically ignores the actual pioneers of the field. Carl Woese, who discovered the archaea and who fought a long battle to get the world to understand that they weren't just bacteria, gets like a sentence in the whole book.
Yea OK, but it's really hard to expect authors to dole out praise of scientists in proportion to the size of their contributions as assessed by the community. Individuals will naturally disagree with the community's assessment (which needn't always be correct), and will like their friends disproportionately, etc.
A lower bar is just that the author correctly represent the evidence and arguments about the scientific issues, especially with regard to identifying the consensus position and representing it fairly. If Lane fails to do that, it's a more serious charge.
