Publishers Taschen have chosen to combine reproductions of Redouté's masterpieces of botanical painting with a text by two devoted experts. French flower painter Pierre-Joseph Redouté is often viewed as one of the last and the best of these painters and engravers. Commissioned by among others, Napoleon's Josephine, Redouté studied with the finest flower painters in France and Amsterdam. His illustrations of the botanical alphabets of D. M. Guillamain were a landmark in flower painting for their accuracy and beauty. He was also an innovator in the techniques of printing, introducing "stipple-engraving" to France. The revered tradition of botanical illustration dates back to the Renaissance. It emerged from the desire to catalogue nature in its unpredictable splendour, and the process demanded the most precise and talented of artists. Working from live plants rather than from the herbarium specimens gave Redoute's watercolours unusual subtlety and freshness. His impressive collection comprises over 2,000 paintings of plants rendered with great accuracy and strict adherence to nature. In this exquisite edition of Les Roses, Redouté turns his attention to the most romantic, desirable, and evocative flower. Originally published in three volumes between 1817 and 1824, it remains his most famous and celebrated work. 14 x 19.5 cm, 192 pages. Colour, new from Taschen.

A beautiful quality Liverpool University Press publication produced to coincide with the eponymous exhibition at Manchester Museum, but exceeding it in scope and content. It examines the enduring fascination with coral as a material, symbol and inspiration for artists, cultures and societies across the centuries, its geological and architectural significance, its religious iconography, its magical and medical properties, its decorative appeal, and its sensitivity to climate change and pollution. Coral's blood red colour and its capacity for transformation and renewal became in Christianity a symbol for the passion and resurrection of Christ. While the religious symbolism reached its peak in the late Middle Ages and early Renaissance, vernacular beliefs in its apotropaic and therapeutic properties survived for centuries to come. Even today one can find keychains and small lucky charms with red cornetti dangling from them. Administered crushed and diluted in wine, coral was also said to stop blood flow and alleviate diseases. Scattered across fields with seeds or hung between branches of fruit trees, coral was supposed to guarantee a plentiful harvest and protection from storms. Coral has been used to craft decorative items and curiosities for 'wonder chambers' and thus began Aquarium mania. Marine organisms such as coral were not only fished out of the water and examined as pallid, stiff skeletons, but also observed as living beings in their natural habitat under water. In its natural state, in botanical illustrations, in artworks, in cabinets of curiosity, in collages, plus dozens of artworks and posters and exhibition items beautifully photographed against a bright white background, this large softback of 160pp measures 27.4 x 21.6cm.

Hamlet describes human beings as "the paragon of animals" and, according to the author, he is not wrong. Almost three centuries after Shakespeare, Charles Darwin scientifically cemented humankind's classification as an animal. The molecules of life are universally shared, and the mechanisms by which we got here the same: genes, DNA, proteins, metabolism, natural selection, evolution. Even though we are a latecomer to life on earth, our species has been around for more than 3,000 centuries. But humans did change, profoundly, about 45,000 years ago, and this fascinating book explores that change and its consequences. It was culture rather than DNA that changed, and the change included things like tools, blade technology, fishing gear, and the use of pigment for decorative purposes or jewellery. People began to cook, and the kitchen may have been a social hub. Musical instruments appeared, and dogs were tamed to assist in the search for food. Often referred to as the "great leap forward" or "cognitive revolution", modern behaviours emerged quickly in several locations, and homo sapiens replaced our ancestors who had left Africa. So what are the differences between humans and animals? Humans have extended our reach by utilising nature and inventing technology, although animals also use tools. We have sex for pleasure, but so probably do animals, and thousands of animals have homosexual relations which may even dominate male giraffe sexual encounters. Our ability to communicate, however, seems to put us apart, although the author points out that the ability of a mantis shrimp to see in 16 different wavelengths rather puts our three into the shade. The author looks at the way male newts drug females to gain access, or male water striders bully females into sex by summoning predators, warning that many behaviours are by-products of our evolved existence rather than the direct results of evolution. In Australia, raptors have been observed starting fires to scatter prey, and in Zambia, a chimp named Julie started a fashion of wearing grass in one ear. DNA changes randomly, and mutations are subject to selection if the phenotype is beneficial to survival. 240pp, line drawings.

Living with beetles, crabgrass, fruit flies, silverfish, dandelions, these are the bane of many people and the target of numerous chemical and physical eradication efforts. In this compelling reassessment of the relationship between humans and the natural world, entomologist and former pesticide developer John Hainze considers the fascinating and bizarre history of how these so-called invasive and unwanted pests and weeds have co-evolved with humanity. He also highlights the benefits of a greater respect and moral consideration toward these organisms with deep insight into the lives of the underappreciated and often reviled creatures that surround us. His engaging natural history draws on ethics, religion and philosophy. A truly astounding amount of killing is taking place in growers' fields, in towns and cities and nearly all of us take part in the massacre. A review article in 2019 concluded that globally more than 40% of insect species are threatened with extinction. Bees, butterflies, dragonflies and dung beetles are mentioned as taxa that are experiencing very significant decline, all of which are represented in this book. Scientific names and terms are used in addition to occasional anthropomorphic descriptions of creatures or their behaviours in this powerfully necessary book. 254pp.

Leading conservationist David Western has an encouraging message for humanity: life has adapted time and time again to its environment and we can do the same. Our ecological emancipation from nature enabled us to expand our horizons from conserving water and food to saving whales, elephants and our cultural heritage. Growing up in Tanzania he believed that there must be a reason why the best wildlife areas were found in the Maasai heartlands, and he started his doctoral research by studying the game reserve at Amboseli where livestock and wildlife migrated freely with the seasons. Overgrazing was being blamed for migration, but the Maasai herders taught David Western the cues they used to follow the livestock to new pastures. He discovered that migratory animals mature earlier and are less susceptible to disease than resident herds, testing his theories by herding his own cows, Sotwa and Matingab. In 1977 Amboseli became a national park and the remainder of the ecosystem would now be owned collectively by the Maasai, in an effort to reduce the tendency for African national parks to make enemies because of the destruction of the Commons, a system with prehistoric origins that has been transformed repeatedly by different forms of government. The elders of a clan now monitor grazing regulations. Visiting America's Malpai ranches in the 1990s the author was drawn by the parallels with the Amboseli Maasai and arranged exchange visits to benefit from each other's conservation expertise. In 2002 six Malpai visited Kenya with a return visit in 2004. The Maasai showed the cowboys how to throw a spear using a yucca stem and the ranchers taught the Maasai to do a barn dance, followed by a Maasai rain dance. Western's wife Shirley Strum, an expert on savannah baboons, researched how a new male inveigles his way into a group by being kind to the females and protecting their young rather than using aggression. Once again co-operation rather than coercion is the key to survival in every ecosystem. 310pp, photos.

A winning combination of expertly curated and favourite National Geographic photographs, here are the most popular images of animals, landscapes, adventure and people with wanderlust. If you believe in the power of photography to change the world and love visual narrative which educates and illuminates, in these pages you will experience the cumulative voice from the company's iconic Instagram account with over one billion likes on its 7,000+ images posted. An Arctic fox checks out the camera with his irresistible face, a stylish couple rides in a motorboat in Chile in 1941 from an archive image posted on the site, endangered European bison in Poland lock horns, a boy and his pet baboon take a walk in Ethiopia, a prototype shark-deterring surfboard gets a test run in South Africa in an underwater shot of a real shark checking it out, a carer in panda costume in China, campfire embers in bright orange on the elk migration trail in Yellowstone National Park, a kitten's first Christmas, the thermal springs in Budapest with couples bathing on a rooftop, a Dogon funeral dance in Mali with the masked dancers on stilts, young hikers climbing and young Gentoo penguins descending into icy waters are shown on opposite pages, and a 1936 streamlined Mercury train pulls out of Cleveland, Ohio engulfing a skyscraper in its smoke. Small remainder mark. Fabulous quality colour book to browse into time and again, compact square 17.3cm, 336pp.
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Instantly recognisable by their spindly legs, probing feelers, huge eyes, dislocated looking thorax and hairy bodies, ants are everywhere, a hugely successful species. Packed with outstanding macrophotography, each ant species is shown in their natural habitat and close-up to highlight identification features. It is a groundbreaking book representing the first accessible field guide to the ants of Britain and Europe, covering 400 species and including detailed descriptions of more than 150 of the most commonly encountered. We are given an introduction to ant ecology, guidance on where to look for ants and how to study them in the field, an overview of families and identification key, plus accurate distribution map, confusion species, habitat and biology. 600 colour photos, 416pp in sturdy softback.

A profound meditation on climate change and the Anthropocene and an urgent search for the fossil - industrial, chemical, geological - that humans are leaving behind. Farrier explores what traces we will leave in the very deep future, from long-lived materials like plastic and nuclear waste, to the 50 million kilometres of roads spanning the planet. In modern times we have created numerous objects and landscapes with a potential to endure through deep time. Our carbon could linger on the atmosphere for 100,000 years, and the remains of our cities will still exist millions of years from now as a layer in the rock. These future fossils have the potential to tell remarkable stories about how we lived in the 21st century. Through literature, art and science, the book invites us to think about how we will be remembered by our distant descendants. Travelling from the Baltic Sea to the Great Barrier Reef, and from an ice core laboratory in Tasmania to Shanghai, one of the world's biggest cities, fossilised remains will speak of life rather than death. Even the contents of our sandwiches will tell a story. 60 billion chickens are killed for human consumption each year and in the future, fossilised chicken bones will be present on every continent within a layer in the geological strata, as a testimony to the intrusion of human appetites in the geological record. 'In my search for future fossils, I look to the air, the oceans, and the rock, from a bubble of ice drawn from the heart of Antarctica to a tomb for radioactive waste deep beneath the Finnish bedrock.' 307pp.

A new way to accept the return to the old way of looking at our gardens as natural and wild spaces and allowing nature to reclaim them a little. Divided into mammals, birds, reptiles, amphibians, fish, invertebrates and plants, the book begins with foxes and badgers, often seen in gardens, one relying on scraps and the other finding room for digging a sett. Stoats, hedgehogs, shrews, squirrels, bats and rats, crows, thrushes and starlings, tree sparrows with their noisy chirruping call and chestnut coloured crown, ducks and geese before we move on to a very brief section on the common grass snake, frogs and toads and then fish like the minnow, the quintessential stream fish and the eel which travels out to sea for several years before returning to our rivers having reached adulthood. Finally, beetles, ants, wasps and bees, dragonflies and damselflies and all manner of moths and beautifully coloured butterflies displayed in a gallery of colour photographs. Worms and centipedes and a note on plants like algae and mosses, these hundreds of colour photographs and text are printed on glossy quality paper. Large softback. 136pp.

A book about Britain's wildlife, how to discover it and the adventures we can have with it right here on our doorstep. In a world where nature is slowly being replaced by technology and material things, every single one of us could do with appreciating the flora and fauna that we have. To spend time in the outdoors exploring, searching and learning teaches us that there is life beyond out laptops and that it needs our help. Written by a young conservationist who details her own small adventures travelling in the UK in search of wildlife encounters, from ancient forests and coastal wildernesses, to bustling city streets an suburban back gardens, nature is everywhere if you know where to look. In her engaging and witty prose she has beautiful descriptions of wildlife including beaches, woodland, island and urban spaces detailing the best places to spot wildlife, tips and animal 'etiquette'. We meet seals and seabirds, whales and dolphins, understand dune systems and sparrowhawks, estuarine wildlife, ospreys and insects, hen harriers and moorland life, red squirrels, bats and owls, foxy city slickers, a graveyard that's very much still alive, garden birds and insects and how to encourage them into your garden. Best of all are the original illustrations and fabulous colour photographs by the author who has featured on BBC Wildlife and New Nature magazines. 192 big glossy pages in softback.