This is a uniquely beautiful and engrossing volume, absolutely drenched in knowledge and love - and more loaded with narrative than any wildlife book I’ve encountered before. It has literature, history, philosophy, folklore, travelogue, biography... Anyone who is interested in natural history will want a copy.

Birds and People is one of the great naturalist books of our time.

Full of intense pleasure.

A sumptuous encyclopedia of humanity’s relationship with birds.

Encyclopedic and spellbinding… The sparkling prose never flags, and it is marvelously illustrated by the photographs of David Tipling.

Sumptuous and poignant… Birds and People is a beautiful anthem to the history and diversity of the relationship between birds and human beings.

If ever a book was timely, it is this gorgeously produced 600-page compendium of ornith- logical facts, images, myths and narratives.

David Tipling’s photographs…are irresistible. They are a feast of colour, history, display and insight… This treasure possesses the timelessness and the authority of a genuine magnum opus. It is encyclopaedic in its reach, covering birds in art, literature, dress, heraldry, industry, commerce, cooking, hunting, farming, philosophy, folklore and delight. It stretches way beyond natural history, but that is in there too. A book for all birds and all people.

In 600 pages enlivened with David Tipling’s photographs, Mark Cocker has built a magnificent avian ark: a book of everything birdy and birdish, and worth saving from countless and enduring entanglements with Homo sapiens… These pages are rich, sustaining and magically suggestive – all at the same time.

Birds and People is primarily a way of looking at our own complex history, through the prism of nature. It is also a beautiful volume, not least because of David Tipling’s excellent photographs… The results are stunning.

Packed with beauty, curiosity, fascination and wonder on every page, Birds and People is probably best not wolfed down but savoured bit by bit. It is a truly exceptional work, soaring in its scope, boundless in its interest, with an ambition matched only by its achievement… Strikes me as the sort of masterpiece that only comes along once or twice a decade.

A tapestry that is by turns fascinating, delightful, surprising and grim. Birds and People rewards the idle browser and will be an important addition to the shelves of anyone who cares about how we interact with the non-human world or what sort of creatures we are becoming… David Tipling’s photographs…are gorgeous.

A vast, ambitious and surprisingly personal overview of what birds mean to human beings... Birds and People is a dense, weighty delight, to be dipped into again and again as curiosity commands. Written with grace, conscientious stewardship and unfettered love, the book is a transformative look at the feathered dinosaurs that, despite all we have done to them, still grace our fields, forests and skies. Birds and People is an encyclopedia with a heart.

A fascinating examination of the relationship between the human and avian worlds… This important book is a clarion call to treasure our birds – or risk losing them forever.

Sumptuous and richly informative.

A monumental new account of the role birds play in human life.

The greatest joy of this great book is that it is unfinishable as well as unputdownable.

A delightful duet between nature writer Mark Cocker and wildlife photographer David Tipling.

Birds and People isn’t just a book for bird enthusiasts, but a thoughtful look at how one seemingly common creature can influence and enrich so much of our lives.

It’s a project with the ‘wow’ factor – and one that has you reaching for the superlatives.

Encyclopedic in content, sumptuous in production and has the gripping, intensive quality of a classic potboiler. This wonderful book should never be confined to a dusty life on a shelf but regarded as a trusty, companion ready to give wise knowledge, faithful service and boundless enjoyment at every opportunity.

[Cocker’s] magnificent new book is a work of encyclopedic proportion, a labour of love and, in unusual ways, a collaboration – and not just with the photographer David Tipling, whose images are as original and brilliantly distinguished as their feathered subjects.

Seven years in the making, Birds and People is a doorstep of a book that becomes a lifetime’s investment once owned, revealing many layers of both human and animal nature in the most absorbing of ways. It is as much a work of anthropology as ornithology, and all the better for it. Quite possibly Mark Cocker’s masterpiece.

Magnificent… 600 stunningly illustrated and gorgeously produced pages.

Visually rich, historically fascinating and vast in both scope and scale, this is a wonderful addition to any bookcase.

Cocker has collected hundreds of anecdotes that illustrate the relationship between humans and birds… He writes movingly about the part that birds play in our culture.

For the unashamed bird-lover… A meticulous and caring study of how humans think about, imagine, use, misuse and abuse the most miraculous of our fellow creatures.

A magnificently compendious account of the connections (and lack of them) between the human and avian world… a marvellous object too.

Magisterial.

Birds and People by Mark Cocker and David Tipling is almost too wonderful a book to give away.

Mark Cocker’s Birds and People, is 535 pages of text and David Tipling’s luminous photographs: a true magnum opus, revealing the whole ghastly story of man’s long exploitation of our feathered friends.

A remarkable work, taking in every family of birds on earth and the way humans have interacted them.

Well laid out and designed and fluidly written, the book seems the best yet on its complex subject.

The intricate research of Mark Cocker and the award-winning photography of David Tipling make this incredible feat of research one of the year’s finest examples of outdoor literature. Humanity’s bond with these feathered beasts is explored with such depth that it boggles the mind as to how the author pulled this overwhelming project together with such success.

The bird book I never knew I needed until I had it. Far from a reference book, it is full of stories – mythology, folklore, personal tales – and that is what makes it so beguiling.

Mark Cocker has done it again.

Authoritative yet readable… The definitive book on the subject.

Stunning.

A sumptuous book full of beautiful photos… It gives you hope that birds will be conserved.