This brilliant and ambitious book is an account of the events that made our world the place it is - geologically, climatically and ecologically - and a call for a new way of thinking about history. 'We learn', Tudge writes, 'to think only in desperately trivial twinklings of time. . . But this contracted view of time is not merely comic. It is dangerous. ' The proper sense of time, he argues, is one that allows us to appreciate the world and see what we are doing to it. If humankind is to survive, we must UNLEARN most of what made us good at dominating our environment up to now.

Prizes

Winner of Conservation Book Prize 1996,Winner of Conservation Book Prize 1995

Colin Tudge three-time winner of the Glaxo/ABSW Science Writer of the Year Award, is the author of eight books, including Animals at the Zoo, The Day Before Yesterday and The Engineer in the Garden. He has lectured widely and is a regular contributor to the New Scientist, the Independent and the Independent on Sunday.