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Imagine inviting some of the world's top thinkers round to your place and asking them to tell you one thing that would make you smarter. No need to imagine: John Brockman has done it, by getting 150 of the planet's smartest minds to offer a neat insight each

A worthy book of the year.

Goulson has plenty of wondrous biological stories to tell, as well as the tale of his own struggle to return the short-haired bumblebee to Britain.

This isn’t one of those natural science books that simply tells you things – it admits how much we don’t know.

Goulson combines enthusiasm with academic authority, addressing the amateur beekeeper and professional apiarist in well-judged proportion.

Goulson's case for the importance of bumblebees will live long in my memory for its sheer passion and scientific detail.

Entertaining and enlightening… Wholly engaging…A must for all gardeners.

A very readable introduction to the remarkable world of bees and bee conservation.

This book will make you bee-conscious. You will learn a lot, not just about bumblebees, and you will never have a dull moment… So read this book. Do it for the bees.

A lovely book

As relief and instruction, I haven’t read a more entertaining and endearing book on matters biological than Dave Goulson’s

In bringing food more directly onto the 'plate' of those who think about buildings and cities, she has done us all a great service

Emotional and resonant… Sharp, funny and sad in equal measure

Written with the same passion and wit that punctuated his reviews for the likes of NME, Coleman shares his journey to reconnecting with the soundtrack of his life

I can’t tell you how good it is but I’ll try… It’s a superb analysis

A warm, witty and very candid book

The book offers experiences and, for anyone whose responsiveness to the world has slackened, a reminder of how full experience can be.

Tim Dee has a deep feeling for the natural world and an ability to celebrate it in ways that seem fresh and new.

[Dee] writes so well, and so personably, that he casts a disarming spell over his readers.

[Dee] is at once a naturalist, environmentalist, journalist, historian and diarist. Dee’s rich writing delights as he imparts his considerable research and observations about life and the state of the world

[It] belongs in the tradition of 'nature writing', but works with it too putting its beautifully written sentences in the service of description and evocation, but using them to frame a serious conversation about environmental preservation and its opposites; it’s a deeply attractive book and also an important one.

Felt very deeply and pondered very wisely, it takes four areas of the planet and tells their story in ways that bring the plight (and delight) of the earth as a whole within reach.

A lyrical, poetic reflection on our relationship with the natural world.

This profound work by Tim Dee is as creative and original as anything on the Man Booker shortlist and arguably more “useful”... The book’s reach is extraordinary.

[A] marvellous new memoir.

An enthralling and unexpected book of what we have made of the natural world

This is nature writing at its finest

With the eye of a birdwatcher and the soul of a poet, Dee meditates on our green spaces and what we have made of them

Dee’s rich writing delights as he imparts his considerable research and observations about life and the state of the world

Charged with meaning and lyrically luminous, Four Fields is an unquantifiable work – and an unmissable one