Kitty Ferguson has written a book that has romance, love, sword fighting, murder, deception, betrayal, trust gone wrong, incredible riches, amazing poverty, reaching for the stars and abject failure... and it’s all one hundred percent true, the most fascinating read about two incredibly interesting people!

In Tycho and Kepler, we are given the sense of science as a quintessentially human activity, conducted not by disembodied spirits squirreled away in ivory towers but by living, breathing, and distinctly idiosyncratic subjects.

Ferguson doesn’t short-change her readers on the wonder-working details of 16th century European science and astronomy, which was then still close to alchemy and astrology. She is good on the profound differences in character between the rich, lordly astronomer Brahe and the poverty-stricken, middle-class mathematician Johannes Kepler, the differences between Brahe’s observational and technical obsessions and Kepler’s modest, seemingly simple-minded, genius that nagged at questions we take for granted now but which outraged his contemporaries. By putting together Brahe as Smaug the dragon sitting on a fabulous golden hoard with Kepler as Bilbo Baggins who wrests the treasure from him, and expounding the science with conscientious clarity, Kitty Ferguson has written an absorbing non-fiction fable that simultaneously stimulates our imagination and satisfies our scientific curiosity.

Her skill in explaining complex astronomical problems and procedures clearly and succinctly is nothing short of amazing.

She can précis her specialist sources briskly, and her own direct research (e.g. a mega kitchen for cooking ready meals) is lively

fascinating history of the co-dependence of a city and country... dip into it...fascinating

this is for the person who knows everything about food but nothing about its source

lively, wide-ranging, endlessly inquisitive book

A superb account of the uneasy relationship between the city and its means of sustenance, charting the historical rise of urban areas and the monopolisation of the food chain by conglomerates

dense with details, rippling with insight an easy to read... This is everything we need to know.

An intense, fluid, intelligent, highly absorbing text that provokes vital questions about sustainability

It's one of those rare books dense with detail, rippling with insight, and easy to read...This is everything we need to know

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