Eleanor
Catton was a Booker prizewinner with The Luminaries,a
Victorian mystery. This very different follow-up, also set in her native New
Zealand, pitches a group of "guerilla" gardeners, led by the idealistic Mira,
against Lemoine, a venture capitalist. Both, for very different reasons, have
plans for a farm abandoned by its owner after a landslip.
When Tony Gallo, aspiring
journalist and former member of Birnam Wood, learns of the deal Mira has struck
with Lemoine, he's dismayed that she's sacrificed the group's ideals and begins
a dangerous investigation into Lemoine's activities.
The plot becomes truly
nail-biting as events escalate – it's a compelling eco-thriller, thrilling and
always character-driven.
INTERNATIONAL BESTSELLER & NATIONAL INDIE BESTSELLER
“Birnam Wood is terrific. As a multilayered, character-driven thriller, it’s as good as it gets. Ruth Rendell would have loved it. A beautifully textured work―what a treat.” ―Stephen King “A generational cri de coeur . . . A sophisticated page-turner . . . Birnam Wood nearly made me laugh with pleasure. The whole thing crackles . . . Greta Gerwig could film this novel, but so could Quentin Tarantino.” ―Dwight Garner, The New York Times
The Booker Prize–winning author of The Luminaries brings us Birnam Wood, a gripping thriller of high drama and…
Naturalist Colin Tudge, well known for The
Secret Life of Birdsand The Secret Life of Trees, isimmensely knowledgeable and an engaging thinker.
The Great
Re-Think is an ambitious and heartfelt project in which he
examines sustainability, government, ethics, environment (though 'biosphere' is
his preferred term, 'environment' having been degraded by over-use and
commodification), food and farming, the past and the future of how we see the
planet and our place in it.
He outlines that "All human action should
be guided by moral/metaphysical principles on the one hand, and by the
principles of ecology on the other." We do indeed need a great re-think of
how we use and abuse the planet's resources - and urgently.
All too plausibly, it seems, popes and scientists are warning us of impending collapse-yet humanity and our fellow creatures could still be looking forward to a long and glorious future: at least a million years of peace and personal fulfilment, with abundant and diverse wildlife.
But to achieve this we need to re-think everything that we do and take for granted, from the day-to-day mundanities of growing and cooking, to the economy and methods of governance, to the most arcane reaches of science and metaphysics.
It all amounts to nothing less than a Renaissance-a re-birth-and the Renaissance to come must…
Like Rachel Carson inSilent
Spring,1962, Goulson warns of the catastrophic declines in
insects and the resulting threat to all life on Earth. He quotes biologist E O Wilson: "If insects were to
vanish, the environment would collapse into chaos."
Even if we're
incapable of valuing wild creatures for themselves and not merely for how they
serve us as pollinators or ecosystem managers, we're taking huge risks with our
careless approach to herbicides and pesticides; our drive for endless crops and
increased meat production leads to devastation for the natural world.
Yes, it's
grim, but Goulson, an engaging writer, intersperses the text with descriptions
of particularly unusual and endearing insects to lighten the tone - and he also
outlines how we can do better. An important and timely book.
'Read this book, then look and wonder' Sunday Times
*A TLS Book of the Year*
We have to learn to live as part of nature, not apart from it. And the first step is to start looking after the insects, the little creatures that make our shared world go round.
Insects are essential for life as we know it - without them, our world would look vastly different. Drawing on the latest ground-breaking research and a lifetime's study, Dave Goulson reveals the long decline of insect populations that has taken place in recent decades and its…
Would you like to reduce your impact on the
environment, ecosystems, and animal life?
This book looks at the choices we make
in our daily lives – what we eat, wear, use, buy, waste, and throw away, and how
those choices affect animals and the environment. By making better, informed
choices, we can reduce our own impacts and begin to influence others, too – live
kindly, tread lightly!
