Evolution
Living on Earth: Life, Consciousness and the Making of the Natural World
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.
Kings of Their Own Ocean: Tuna and the Future of our Oceans
This is a tale of human obsession, one intrepid tuna, the dedicated fisherman who caught and set her free, the promises and limits of ocean science and the big truth of how our insatiable appetite for bluefin transformed a cottage industry into a global dilemma.
The Age of Cats: How Cats Evolved from the Savannah to your Sofa
The past, present and future of the world’s most popular and beloved pet, from a leading evolutionary biologist and great cat lover.
‘Engaging and wide-ranging … The Age of Cats is a readable and informed exploration of the wildcat that lurks within Fluffy’ Washington Post
Under the Henfluence: The World of Chickens and the People Who Love Them
‘Share[s] the life-enhancing joys of the humble hen’ Sunday Times
‘Clocks our obsession with chicken-keeping … Brilliant’ New York Magazine
An immersive blend of chicken-keeping memoir and animal welfare reporting by a journalist who accidentally became obsessed with her flock.
Earth: Over 4 Billion Years in the Making: Unabridged edition
‘Combines the natural history of programmes such as David Attenborough’s Planet Earth with the planetary focus of Brian Cox’s Universe’ Guardian
A beautiful, full colour book to accompany the 5 part BBC TV series telling the most important story of all, the deep history of our own planet.
On the Origin of Evolution: Tracing ‘Darwin’s Dangerous Idea’ from Aristotle to DNA
A Waterstones Best Book of 2020
The theory of evolution by natural selection did not spring fully formed and unprecedented from the brain of Charles Darwin. Rather it has been examined and debated by philosophers the world over for thousands of years.
Metazoa: Animal Minds and the Birth of Consciousness
The follow-up to the BBC Radio 4 Book of the Week Other Minds
A Times and Sunday Times Book of the Year
A Waterstones Best Book of 2020
The scuba-diving philosopher explores the origins of animal consciousness.
Collins Modern Classics – Other Minds: The Octopus and the Evolution of Intelligent Life (Collins Modern Classics)
Introducing the Collins Modern Classics, a series featuring some of the most significant books of recent times, books that shed light on the human experience – classics which will endure for generations to come.
Symphony in C: Carbon and the Evolution of (Almost) Everything
An enchanting biography of the most resonant – and most necessary – chemical element on Earth.
The Tangled Tree: A Radical New History of Life
Longlisted for the National Book Award for Nonfiction and A New York Times Notable Book of 2018.
Our understanding of the ‘tree of life’, with powerful implications for human genetics, human health and our own human nature, has recently completely changed.
Spying on Whales: The Past, Present and Future of the World’s Largest Animals
Whales are among the largest, most intelligent, deepest diving species to have ever lived on our planet. We have hunted them for thousands of years and scratched their icons into our mythologies. They simultaneously fill us with waves of terror, awe and affection – yet we know hardly anything about them.
Too Big to Walk: The New Science of Dinosaurs
Ever since Jurassic Park we thought we knew how dinosaurs lived their lives. In this remarkable new book, Brian J. Ford reveals that dinosaurs were, in fact, profoundly different from what we believe, and their environment was unlike anything we have previously thought.
Collins New Naturalist Library – Slugs and Snails (Collins New Naturalist Library, Book 133)
Slugs and snails are part of the great Phylum Mollusca, a group that contains creatures as varied as the fast-moving squid or the sedentary clams, cockles and mussels. The largest group, however, are the gastropods, animals originally with a single foot and a single coiled shell.
The Mysterious World of the Human Genome
How could a relatively simple chemical code give rise to the complexity of a human being? How could our human genome have evolved? And how does it actually work?