Moving

Amusing and candid

A well-written and riveting read 9/10

Heartwarming

Richard Girling calls the sea our civilisation's "amniotic fluid". His story of its violation by oil pollution, over-fishing, climate-change-driven erosion and our belief that we have the wisdom to "manage" the marine environment is shocking. It's a story of arrogance, ignorance and greed, and in Girling's electrifying prose it becomes a parable of wilful matricide.

For centuries our sea, less our lands, was what characterised us as a people. Now we fly over it, seek it less for work and play, and fail to recognise that it is in crisis. Richard Girling's wonderfully informed, hard hitting and inspired account of what is happening on our shoreline shatters this ignorance. Sea Change is a book which seems to be energised by the ocean itself and one which could bring us back - just in time - to face the gains and losses of our coast.

A gently humorous and accessible look at a serious subject... above all an entertaining read

As he delights in each new discovery, so do we

The Magic of Reality provides a beautiful, accessible and wide ranging volume that addresses the questions that all of us have about the universe...written with the masterful and eloquently literate style of perhaps the best popular expositor of science, Richard Dawkins, and delightfully illustrated by Dave McKean. What more could anyone ask for?

This book may be exactly what's needed to increase science literacy for readers of all ages

This book is primarily aimed at teenagers, but plenty of adults will get a kick out of it too...McKean's drawings bring the text to life brilliantly ... Dawkins writes convincingly about everything from chemistry to statistics

Dawkins uses a simple, brilliant technique highly appealing to young and old

Few scientists manage to reach a huge popular audience. Even among them Richard Dawkins is distinctive for the clarity and elegance of his prose. The Magic of Reality... will be appreciated by inquisitive children while illuminating much for the adult general reader.

This is not a book about the end of the world but about an imagined beginning ...The results of this huge thought-experiment are both fascinating and surprising. Fascinating for what they tell us about the impermanence of the works of man, and surprising for the simple reason that it soon becomes clear that our world would carry on regardless, indifferent to our demise

Weisman's gripping fantasy will make most readers hope that at least some of us can stick around long enough to see how it all turns out

Engrossing

An idea that is so lateral and clever, so powerfully evocative and masterfully executed that the only appropriate response is fervent envy

A wonderful idea ... a hugely enjoyable and thought-provoking book

Fascinating, absorbing

A quick, absorbing read - a summer beach book with brains

If you can stomach only one end-of-the world-as-we-know it story this summer, none is more audacious or interesting than Alan Weisman's The World Without Us

His is an extraordinary story laced with tragedy

[Root's] life story, vividly related here, is crammed with incident and adventure. Curious, creative and fearless, he has diced with death on numerous occasions and been mauled several times in his efforts to capture the daily lives of everything from silver-back gorillas to leopards in the wild on film. A gripping account of a life well lived