Survivors: The Animals and Plants that Time has Left Behind
Richard Fortey
Survivors: The Animals and Plants that Time has Left Behind
The history of life on Earth is far older — and far odder — than many of us realise. In this book, acclaimed author Richard Fortey traces this history not through fossil records, but in the living stories of organisms that have survived nearly unchanged for hundreds of millions of years and whose existence today affords us tantalising glimpses of landscapes long vanished.
4.0 out of 5 based on 8 reviews
|
Omniscore:
|
| Classification |
Non-fiction |
| Genre |
Science & Nature |
| Format |
Hardback |
| Pages |
400 |
| RRP |
£25.00 |
| Date of Publication |
September 2011 |
| ISBN |
978-0007209866 |
| Publisher |
HarperPress |
| |
The history of life on Earth is far older — and far odder — than many of us realise. In this book, acclaimed author Richard Fortey traces this history not through fossil records, but in the living stories of organisms that have survived nearly unchanged for hundreds of millions of years and whose existence today affords us tantalising glimpses of landscapes long vanished.
Reviews
The Literary Review
Ted Nield
"Magnificent … this book (like all his others) demonstrates that Fortey is, principally, not a scientist who can write, but a writer who does science."
01/09/2011
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The Sunday Times
Brian Schofield
"Survivors is an entertaining, accessible and intensely stimulating book — and highly recommended."
04/09/2011
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The Evening Standard
Marina Benjamin
"… Fortey has a unique way with the most humble of lifeforms, an infectious curiosity that can slide into near rapture, coupled with a lack of presumption that many of his peers in the field of evolutionary biology lack entirely."
25/08/2011
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The Guardian
Colin Tudge
"All in all it's a great story, and no one is better equipped to tell it than Fortey. Just one cavil: though evolution is well established as a fact of life (as much as any historical science can be), there are still some metaphysical loose ends that can never be put to rest but could certainly be addressed through a survey such as this ... But Survivors is excellent natural history, even so. And, as those who finance science need reminding, natural history matters."
09/09/2011
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The Independent
Marek Kohn
"As a naturalist he is absorbed by the tapestry of life, the variety of its patterns, rather than the weaving or the threads. While it's been a pleasure to follow him on his grand ramble, I continue to wait in hope for an evolutionist who will explain just what these survivors have been doing right."
09/09/2011
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The Financial Times
Crispin Tickell
"Survivors contains a lot of personal anecdote and sometimes reads more like notes for a book than the book itself. This certainly gives immediacy to the narrative but those who make their way through its long paragraphs may sometimes be tempted to skip. They would be unwise to do so. Fortey tells a series of fascinating stories that serve to bring alive what is for most of us an unfamiliar past. Under his tutelage fossils of all kinds — survivors or not — seem to come alive."
09/09/2011
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The Daily Telegraph
Ed Lake
"... a sociable ramble through field notes that occasionally read like they were made at a wine-tasting (“bubbly, popcorn-like rugose masses,” he writes of silica deposits at Yellowstone Park “may build up into rubbly sprouts resembling some sort of stony broccoli”) ... Implicit in Survivors is a powerful rebuttal [to creationists]"
25/08/2011
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The Sunday Telegraph
Steve Jones
"The book is passionate, clear and comprehensive but says oddly little about the greatest living fossil of all: man himself"
28/08/2011
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