What Jane Goodall did for chimpanzees, international ecologist and conservation scientist Hannah Mumby now does for elephants in her compelling accounts that illuminates the species remarkable similarities to humans. Elephants are as unique as people. They can be clever and curious or headstrong and impulsive, shy or sociable. Learn to know them as individuals as well as a species in this evocative account of years spent studying elephant behaviour in the wild. Watching a family out for a swim on a hot day, Dr Hannah Mumby notes grandmothers, mothers, sisters and children exchanging noisy greetings, a consistent stream of close-range vocalisations, intermittent touching, co-operative herding of babies and frequent stopping for snacks. A close and interconnected family. But in this family, the adults weigh several tons each and the babies wave trunks playfully at one another. This is a herd of elephants. That elephants are intelligent, sentient beings is common knowledge, but so much about their day-to-day lives and abilities remains unknown. How do they communicate with one another over seemingly impossible distances? How do males spend their lives once they have left their mothers' herds? And how much do they really remember? In this lyrically written and deeply personal account of several years of field research, Mumby reverently describes her own elephant encounters, alongside an exploration of the most up-to-date discoveries about the lives of these gentle giants. Learn how elephants live, travel, have sex, raise children and relate to one another, and reflect on how they think and feel. She also touches on growing old and death and ivory. Remainder mark, 295 pages. Magnificent colour illus including one of elephants coaching themselves in dust with protection from the sun and biting insects.

One of the world's most important scientists in his personal and timely book assesses the precarious state of our environment, examining the mass extinctions occurring in our time in a literal even poetic recounting that is readily accessible to lay readers. He spells out a specific plan to save our world while there is still time in a vision which is economically sound. Our world is far richer than previously conceived, yet so ravaged by human activity that half its species could be gone by the end of the present century. These two contrasting themes - unexpected magnificence and underestimated peril - have originated during the past two decades of research. Destruction of natural habitats, the rampant spread of invasive species, pollution, uncontrolled population growth and overharvesting are the main threats to our natural world. Represented in artworks of endangered and extinct species and races include the hawksbill sea turtle, giant kangaroo rat, golden toad, dwarf wedge muscle, Indian knob mountainbalm, valley elderberry longhorn beetle, striped adobe lily, white sedge, and the San Francisco fork-tailed damselfly among them. The book is both a moving description of the world's astonishing animals and plants and a guidebook for the protection of all its species, including our own. Remainder mark 229 page paperback.

Mars was once similar to Earth, but today there are no rivers, no lakes, no oceans. Coated in red dust, the terrain is bewilderingly empty. Mars has no plate tectonics, no magnetic field and little protective atmosphere. In its early days, Mars was black with igneous rock. Untold piles of lava built the planet's massive volcanic provinces which bulged with enough basalt to flex the crust. Its volcanoes lifted greenhouse gases into the air wrapping the surface with a blanket of atmosphere, and we know from geological records that the terrain was warm and wet at least periodically. Then between 3 and a half and 4 billion years ago our planetary paths diverged and Mars was laid bare. Almost all of the atmosphere disappeared and so did the water. Yet multiple spacecraft are circling Mars, sweeping over Terra Sabaea, Syrtis Major, the dunes of Elysium, and Mare Sirenum - on the brink, perhaps, of a staggering find, one that would inspire humankind as much as any discovery in the history of modern science. In this beautifully observed, deeply personal book, Georgetown scientist Sarah Stewart Johnson tells the story of how she and other researchers have scoured Mars for signs of life, transforming the planet from a distant point of light into a world of its own. Johnson's fascination with Mars began as a child, turning over rocks with her father and looking at planets in the night sky. She now conducts fieldwork in some of Earth's most hostile environments, such as the Dry Valleys of Antarctica and the salt flats of Western Australia, developing methods for detecting life on other worlds. Here, with poetic precision, she interlaces her own personal journey - as a female scientist and a mother - with tales of other seekers, from Percival Lowell, who was convinced that a utopian society existed on Mars, to Audouin Dollfus, who tried to carry out astronomical observations from a stratospheric balloon. In the process, she shows how the story of Mars is also a story about Earth - our mirror, our foil, a telltale reflection of our own anxieties and yearnings. 266 pages.

Sunday Times Best Nature Book of the Year. We meet animals that use a sense of smell, others that navigate based on polarised light, others on magnetism. We meet the blind Mexican cavefish that uses the pressure waves from its own motion to detect different objects, the spiny lobsters that form long straight conga lines of up to 200 metres as they trudge nose to tail into the deep, dragonflies that hitch a lift on monsoon winds, and ants that measure how far they've travelled by counting their steps. Animals plainly know where they're going, but how they know has remained a stubborn mystery - until now. Supernavigators is a globe-trotting voyage of discovery alongside astounding animals of every stripe: dung beetles that steer by the Milky Way, box jellyfish that can see above the water (with a few of their 24 eyes), sea turtles that sense Earth's magnetic field, and many more. The number of animals travelling long distance from insects to sea turtles and from eels to whales is just astonishing, as all the many ways in which they find their way. David Barrie consults animal behaviourists and Nobel Prize-winning scientists to catch us up on the cutting edge of animal intelligence, revealing these wonders in a whole new light. 305 page paperback.

Sub-titled 'Defying Gravity by Design and Evolution', this big beautifully produced volume is illustrated by Jana Lenzova in rich colour full page plates including a dirigible fish balloon airship, a front view showing how planes and birds face the same rules of physics, a stunning blue flying fish, a four-winged dinosaur, a tiger beetle, and a giraffe meets a quetzalcoatlus, although separated by the perhaps 70 million years. The Oxford University zoology professor and bestselling author has always been a persuasive thinker. Here is a 'masterly investigation of all aspects of flight, human and animal' and how both have learned to overcome the pull of gravity and take to the skies. From the mythical Icarus to the sadly extinct but spectacular bird Argentavis magnificens, from the Wright Flyer and the 747 airplane, to the Tinkerbella Fairyfly and the Peregrine Falcon, Dawkins also explores flights of fantasy and escaping the everyday - through science, ideas and imagination. A superb combination of a leading scientist and talented artist, this is one fascinating and beautifully illustrated publication. 294pp, 16.5 x 24cm.

A classic collection of the New Yorker's most urgent and groundbreaking reporting from the frontlines of the climate emergency and global warming over the last three decades. The writing includes Bill McKibben's seminal essay 'The End of Nature', the first piece to popularise both the science and politics of climate change for a general audience. Also the Pulitzer prize-winning work of Elizabeth Kolbert, Kathryn Schulz, Jonathan Franzen, Eric Klinenberg and others. The essays take a glacier in India, Inuits in Alaska, solar-power users in Tanzania, fire managers in California, from Greenland to the Great Plains, and into both laboratories and rainforests. 541pp, paperback.

A Times History Book of the Year 2022, we have the first edition described by the Sunday Times as 'Exhilarating and whip-smart' and by the award-winning historian. It is a thrilling true historical detective story set in 16th century Portugal. The book follows the interconnected lives of two men across the Renaissance globe; one an aficionado of mermen and Ethiopian culture, an art collector, historian and expert on water music, returns home from witnessing the birth of the modern age to die in a mysterious incident, apparently the victim of a grisly and curious murder. The other, a ruffian, vagabond and braggart, chased across the globe from Mozambique to Japan, ends up as the national poet of Portugal. The stories of Damiao de Gois and Luis de Camoes capture the extraordinary wonders that awaited Europeans on their arrival in India and China, the challenges these marvels presented to longstanding beliefs, and the vast conspiracy to silence the questions these posed about the nature of history and of human life. It is 30th January 1574, and the King's archivist lies dead - burned or strangled or drowned. The paper found in his hand could be from any corner of the Portuguese empire. But whatever it contains is probably a lie... Like all good mysteries, everyone has their own version of events. Beautifully written and utterly mesmerising with vivid characterisation of people and places, not least those of Lisbon life high and low. 344pp, woodcut illustrations and colour plates and maps and a note on quotations and Portuguese pronunciation.

Another fantastic Dorling Kindersley lavishly illustrated and beautifully designed tome, not necessarily for children ages eight up. Packed with hundreds of life-like digital reconstructions of Earth's most incredible animals, the book will transport you back in time and you will discover everything from monstrous scorpions and swooping pterosaurs to dinosaur eggs and Ice-age mammoths. Exclusive images of the world's best and most complete dinosaur fossils have been photographed on location in North America and Europe. Exclusive digital images reflect the most important new findings on feathered dinosaurs and the content covers key curriculum topics in geography, biology and science and has been created in association with the Smithsonian Institution. With more than 100 prehistoric species featured, this is the completely revised edition of the bestselling encyclopedia, a catalogue of facts and photos and a visual celebration. Ages 5-8 years or interested adults, 22.4 x 28.4cm.
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Sub-titled 'Extraordinary Partnership Between Humans and Dogs', the popular TV nature presenter is a lifelong animal lover. Now living on an idyllic farm in Wales, Kate has achieved her dream of surrounding herself with as many varieties as possible, but as with many Brits, the dog has always held a special place in her heart. Here she uses her journey with her sheepdog puppy Teg to frame her examination of this very special relationship and her book is packed full of stories about rescue dogs, guide dogs, service dogs and medical dogs. Kate's journey takes her to the mountains of Afghanistan, a prison in Scotland, and a unique research centre in Austria. Meet ex-Royal Marine Jon with his chocolate Labrador Jester, Marjory with her beloved ex-guide dog Mouse, Colonel Neil Smith and his retired IED detection dog Fire, and many more people whose dogs have changed and saved countless lives by working together with their owners, handlers and human companions. Inspiring, eye-opening and heart warming by the writer and broadcaster specialising in science, wild life and rural affairs. A companion to Humble by Nature code 92848. 308pp, paperback, photos.

You would have to have a heart of stone not to be touched by Kate Humble's enthusiasm for her new way of life. In 2007 after 20 years of living in London, Kate and her husband Ludo decided it was time to leave the city behind. Three years later, now the owner of a Welsh smallholding, Kate hears that a nearby farm is to be broken up and sold off. Another farm loss, another opportunity for a young farmless farmer gone. Desperate to stop the sale, Kate contacts the council with an alternative plan - to keep the farm working and to run a rural skills and animal husbandry school alongside it. Against all the odds she succeeds. In her book she shares her highly personal account of her journey from London town house to Welsh farm. Along the way we meet Bertie and Lawrence the donkeys, Myfanwy and Blackberry the pigs and goats Biscuit and Honey, not forgetting a dog called Badger and his unladylike sidekick Bella. We are introduced to the tenant farmers Tim and Sarah, the locals who helped and some who didn't, and a whole host of newborn lambs, a hive of bees and various other hoofed, furred and fathered livestock. Based on their working farm in Monmouthshire, the couple also run courses in food. Full of warmth and passion for the natural world and a companion to her book Friend For Life we also have in stock code 92842. 282pp, paperback.