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List Price: £24.99
Our Price: £18.19
Author:
Terry Stevenson, John Fanshawe
By Christopher Helm Publishers Ltd
 Best in the field, 2008-12-22
Others have already compared this book to the other East African field guides available, and I agree with them. It combines the high standard of illustrations of the old Collins guide (the same artist, Norman Arlott, was involved in both) with an excellent layout. In paperback version at least, it is sufficiently light enough to use in the field. We all seem to have plates that niggle us slightly, for me it is the birds with irridescent plumage, sunbirds and starlings, that don't seem quite right. Having said that, the illustrations are fine for identification which is, after all, the purpose of the book.
If you are heading to East Africa to watch birds, this is the book for you.
List Price: £8.99
Our Price: £4.56
Author:
Stefan Klein
By Penguin
Fantastic Book!, 2008-07-23
This is one of the best books I have read this year! Originally recommended in the FT weekend edition newspaper.
I was surprised at the level of scientific research that is referenced to his writing. Makes a big change then reading about views with no scientific rigour.
Very well structured and some brilliant pieces on Time and how to use it!
List Price: £14.99
Our Price: £7.98
Author:
Chris Baines
By Frances Lincoln
Exactly what I was looking for, 2007-05-17
After the recent (delightful) arrival of roe deer in my garden I bought this book yesterday and read it straight through - it has exactly the right kind of information on gardening for wildlife: why exactly you should plant native plants rather than exotics. Which butterflies and birds feed on which plants. How to propagate wildflowers. How to arrange shrubs and trees to provide better shelter and animal cover. It's Chris Baines's attitude which is the most refreshing - got big bites out of your foliage? Good, he says, it shows you're providing food for xy and z insects, which are food for birds, which are food for larger birds, foxes and so on. I am lucky enough to have a very large country garden, but this book is suitable even if all you have is a city balcony. I am hoping to put his ideas on different kinds of meadow planting, ponds and wetland planting into effect by next summer. A really good read.
List Price: £9.99
Our Price: £5.03
Author:
Jared M. Diamond
By Vintage
A book to read to change your view of the world !, 2003-08-26
A book to recommend everyone who would like to know their place in the animal kingdom. There is only 2% difference between the chimpanzee, man's closest relative and us. Jared Diamond tries and largely succeeds in explaining this difference using science and philosophy and just plain logic. Please read this book, it will help explain a lot about Man, his sexuality, his destructive properties, his creativity and the reasons why he has reached this point in evolution. He discusses adultery, the origin of art, the importance of language, addiction, genocide, the start of agriculture, the great leap forward when Man started to make a significant impact on planet earth and many other useful side topics. He gives us another definition of history. He makes us stand back from our everyday existence and see ourselves as perhaps we really are. If you have an open mind and want to read a different viewpoint, read this book !
List Price: £7.99
Our Price: £2.74
Author:
Susan Blackmore
By Oxford Paperbacks
Habits, skills, songs, stories, ideas: humans are marvellously equipped to keep themselves and each other ceaselessly busy and it's as well, for no matter how hard we try, we humans just can't stop thinking. So, says Susan Blackmore, what if consciousness is not some esoteric genetic freebie but is itself the product of an altogether different evolutionary process? Once humans learned to imitate each other--that is, receive, copy and retransmit "memes"--the rest, Blackmore argues, is a foregone and somewhat chilling conclusion: we are the product of our memes just as we are the products of our genes, the trouble being that memes, like genes, care only for their own propagation. The ability to imitate each other laid us open to ideas good and bad in equal measure. These proliferated in such numbers that individuals, competing to imitate the best imitators, needed bigger and bigger brains to contain the flood. Now our heads are so big, they are barely birthable. Blackmore's brilliantly argued version of how humans became conscious--not to say downright troubled--demolishes some of the most intractable problems of human evolution and social biology, with flair. Hers is a book ful...
A terrific book on a 'science' in decline, 2007-10-18
It is a shame that just as usage of the word 'meme' is becoming commonplace, the 'science' of Memetics is falling out of favour. This is largely due to its inability to actually predict anything. For a science to be accepted as such it has to be testable - so it has to be predictive. Memetics (so far) doesn't do that. All it does is offer explanations of things that have already happened, and so many of its enthusiastic early converts have since gone in other directions. This is a shame, because to anyone new to it Memetics does offer the most stunning of explanations and insights.
Anyway, back in 2000, while everyone else dithered, Susan Blackmore nailed her colours to the mast and wrote this brilliant book full of insight and daring conjecture. You might disagree with a lot of what she says - it might even annoy you - but you will find it a fascinating read, and the best book (yet) on the subject.
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