The Earth: natural history: general interest
Showing 1–16 of 18 results
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Close encounters of the fungal kind
£25.00Close encounters of the fungal kind
‘A very enjoyable book that brilliantly blends science, insight and passion’ TRISTAN GOOLEY
£25.00 -
Footprints in the woods
£10.99Footprints in the woods
‘Footprints in the Woods’ is John Lister-Kaye’s account of a year spent observing the comings and goings of otters, beavers, badgers, weasels, and pine martens. This family – Mustelidae – all live in the wild at Aigas, the conservation and field study centre that has been John’s home for more that 45 years.
£10.99 -
Ghosts in the hedgerow
£10.99Ghosts in the hedgerow
A body lies motionless on the ground. Small, with a snouty head and covered with spines, it is unquestionably dead before its time. And all of those gathered around the corpse are suspect. So which one of them is responsible for this crime – and for the disappearance of many many thousands of hedgehogs in recent decades? Is it the car driver, the badger, the farmer, the gardener? Who could possibly have it in for a hedgehog? In poll after poll they come out top as our favourite mammal. And yet their numbers are estimated to have halved in less than twenty years. Magnifying glass in hand, Tom Moorhouse investigates the evidence. On a vital mission to bring those responsible to justice, prevent further murder and save a species, he uncovers a story full of twists, turns and uncomfortable truths about the trade-offs that exist between humans and wildlife. But he can also see a solution.
£10.99 -
La vie
£9.99La vie
The Charente: roofs of red terracotta tiles, bleached-white walls, windows shuttered against the blaring sun. The baker does his rounds in his battered little white van with a hundred warm baguettes in the back, while a cat picks its way past a Romanesque church, the sound of bells skipping across miles of rolling, glorious countryside. For many years a farmer in England, John Lewis-Stempel yearned once again to live in a landscape where turtle doves purr and nightingales sing, as they did almost everywhere in his childhood. He wanted to be self-sufficient, to make his own wine and learn the secrets of truffle farming. And so, buying an old honey-coloured limestone house with bright blue shutters, the Lewis-Stempels began their new life as peasant farmers.
£9.99 -
Living on Earth
£22.00Living on Earth
The eagerly anticipated conclusion to Peter Godfrey-Smith’s three-part exploration of the origins of intelligence on Earth, which began with the bestselling Other Minds in 2018 and continued with Metazoa in 2020.
£22.00 -
Mega meltdown
£9.99Mega meltdown
Come face to face with the mega-sized animals of the Ice Age, and our own early ancestors, in this stylishly illustrated book from debut talent Jack Tite.
£9.99 -
Our moon
£10.99Our moon
Every living being throughout history, across time and geography, has gazed up at the same moon. It has inspired scientific discovery and culture from the ancient astronomers to the scientific revolution of Copernicus and Galileo, from the 1969 Apollo landings to writers and artists, and stirred an inexhaustible desire to know where we come from and how we got here. And as astronauts around the world prepare to return to the Moon – opening up new frontiers of discovery, profit and politics – ‘Our Moon’ tells the dazzling story of how the Moon has shaped life as we know it, fuelled dramatic change across the globe and could be the key to humanity’s future.
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Something in the woods loves you
£25.00Something in the woods loves you
An inspiring blend of nature writing and memoir that explores nature’s crucial role in our emotional and mental health
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The burning earth
£30.00The burning earth
Ever since innovations in agriculture vastly expanded production of the staples of food energy, our remarkable achievements in reshaping nature have brought about an overwhelming expansion in the life chances of billions of people. Yet every technological innovation has also empowered humans to exploit each other and the planet with devastating brutality, twinning the stories of environment and of Empire, genocide and eco-cide, as with Spanish silver mining in Peru and British gold mining in South Africa. After the age of empire, new nations raced to make up lost ground, expanding human freedom at devastating ecological cost. Amrith’s environmental lens provides an essential new way of understanding war: as a massive reshaping of the earth through the global mobilization of natural resources, those resources including humans themselves.
£30.00 -
The curious life of the cuckoo
£9.99The curious life of the cuckoo
Is there any bird more mysterious than the cuckoo? It is invariably heard, and not seen. And if seen, it is mistaken for a sharp-winged hawk. The female cuckoo – by a trick that borders on alchemy – is able to disguise its egg as another’s. In Greek myth the god Zeus assumed the form of a cuckoo to seduce Hera. But we forgive the cuckoo its con-artistry, because it is the true herald of spring. It is the bird that uplifts our wintered hearts, with that first two-note ‘cuk-koo’ unmistakable as it sounds across the country. John Lewis-Stempel explains one of nature’s greatest enigmas in vivid, lyrical prose, and celebrates this iconic bird.
£9.99 -
The history trees
£22.00The history trees
The ultimate photographic collection of the most historic trees on the planet.
Uncover remarkable trees from around the world, many of which have borne witness to key moments in history or reached a scale and age that have allowed them to become a part of history themselves.
£22.00 -
The meteorites
£20.00The meteorites
From your window you can see the stars and distant planets: light years away, it’s easy to think that our existences and theirs will never intersect. Yet meteorites – mysterious, irregular rocks of sometimes immense value – connect us with the vastness of the universe. They may have brought the first life to our planet, and today they still reveal extraordinary scientific insights. Helen Gordon reveals the fascinating stories of fallen meteorites and the lives they’ve touched – from collectors to kings, scientists to farmers. She meets amateur astronomers and gem dealers, goes meteorite hunting across rooftops and learns what objects moving through space can tell us about the fragility of life on Earth.
£20.00 -
The orchid
£28.00The orchid
From flamboyant and colourful to strange and understated, and from alpine meadows to cloud forests, the orchid’s variety and range is unparallelled – and has made it an object of obsession to plant collectors for centuries. With over 250 stunning botanical illustrations and fascinating documents from the archives at the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, this book explores 40 different varieties of this evocative and elusive flower.
£28.00 -
The Shortest History of Sex
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The Story of Nature
£25.00The Story of Nature
The story of humanity’s evolving relationship with the natural world from pre-history to the present day
£25.00 -
Under a metal sky
£20.00Under a metal sky
The discovery of minerals beneath our feet has transformed our species. Ochre first prompted humans to express themselves in art; tin and copper helped instigate the Bronze Age and later the Industrial Revolution; silver kick-started the engines of global trade. Each of these substances generated a leap forward in technology, each one opened the imagination a little further – and each one brought with it a cache of unexpected dangers. ‘Under A Metal Sky’ begins and ends in Philip Marsden’s homeland of Cornwall, one of the world’s great geological hotspots. Rich with revelations, this book traces the dazzling achievements and dark consequences of our ability to extract what we want from the earth, and presents a fascinating new perspective on European history and on our troubled relationship with the natural world.
£20.00