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Nature

brush

A Brush with Birds

$60.00
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A Brush with Birds celebrates the exquisite artworks and incredible life of one of the world’s finest bird painters, Richard Weatherly OAM.

A skilled falconer and artist, Richard has spent more than fifty years observing birds and their natural habitats around the world, from Antarctica to Zimbabwe to New Guinea, Australia and America. In A Brush with Birds, Richard accompanies his stunning paintings and sketches with fascinating insights, anecdotes and knowledge gathered throughout his career.

Richard’s work continues to document and celebrate the natural world, and reminds us of the importance of conserving our unique environment.

deep dive

Deep Dive into Deep Sea

$26.99
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Get ready to dive into the darkest depths of the sea with real-life explorer and scientist, Professor Tim Flannery.

You might think you know about the ocean, but the deep sea is nothing like the beach. Things are WEIRD down there.

Who is the giant squid’s mortal enemy?

Can you see ghosts in the deep sea?

Why would a sea cucumber have teeth on its butt?

And what on earth is a headless chicken monster?

Put on your SCUBA gear – you’re about to find out!

history-of-the-world-in-100-animals-9781471186325_xlg

History of the World in 100 Animals

$49.99
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A powerful and fascinating insight into the 100 animals – from the blue whale to the mosquito – that have had the biggest influence on humanity through the ages.

We are not alone. We are not alone on the planet. We are not alone in the countryside. We are not alone in cities. We are not alone in our homes. We are humans and we love the idea of our uniqueness. But the fact is that we humans are as much members of the animal kingdom as the cats and dogs we surround ourselves with, the cows and the fish we eat, and the bees who pollinate so many of our food-plants.

In The History of the World in 100 Animals, award-winning author Simon Barnes selects the 100 animals who have had the greatest impact on humanity and on whom humanity has had the greatest effect. He shows how we have domesticated animals for food and for transport, and how animals powered agriculture, making civilisation possible. A species of flea came close to destroying human civilisation in Europe, while the slaughter of a species of bovines was used to create one civilisation and destroy another. He explains how pigeons made possible the biggest single breakthrough in the history of human thought. In short, he charts the close relationship between humans and animals, finding examples from around the planet that bring the story of life on earth vividly to life, with great insight and understanding.

The heresy of human uniqueness has led us across the millennia along the path of destruction. This book, beautifully illustrated throughout, helps us to understand our place in the world better, so that we might do a better job of looking after it. That might save the polar bears, the modern emblem of impending loss and destruction. It might even save ourselves.

metazoa

Metazoa

$32.99
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Dip below the ocean’s surface and you are soon confronted by forms of life that could not seem more foreign to our own: sea sponges, soft corals and flower-like worms, whose rooted bodies and intricate geometry are more reminiscent of plant life than anything recognisably animal. Yet these creatures are our cousins. As fellow members of the animal kingdom – the Metazoa – they can teach us about the evolutionary origins of not only our bodies, but also our minds.

In his acclaimed book, Other Minds, Peter Godfrey-Smith explored the mind of the octopus – the closest thing to an intelligent alien on Earth. In Metazoa, he expands his inquiry to animals at large, investigating the evolution of experience with the assistance of far-flung species. Godfrey-Smith shows that the appearance of the first animal body form well over half a billion years ago was a profound innovation that set life upon a new path. He charts the ways that subsequent evolutionary developments – eyes that track, for example, and bodies that move through and manipulate the environment – shaped the lives of animals. Following the evolutionary paths of a glass sponge, soft coral, banded shrimp, octopus and fish, then moving onto land and the world of insects, birds and primates like ourselves, Metazoa gathers these stories together to bridge the gap between matter and mind and address one of the most important philosophical questions: what is the origin of consciousness?

Combining vivid animal encounters with philosophy and biology, Metazoa reveals the impossibility of separating the evolution of our minds from the evolution of animals themselves.

Rivers

Rivers: The Lifeblood of Australia

$49.99
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Givers of life and subjects of anguish, Australian rivers have shaped the nation from the moment the first Australians arrived tens of thousands of years ago. Offering the vital ingredient for life, they are also guardians of culture, a means of transportation, sites for play and leisure, and sources of power—deeply entrenched in almost every aspect of human life and an irreplaceable part of the global ecosystem.

Australia’s vast inland seas of some 50 million years ago have disappeared, leaving a continent that is mostly desert. Of the waters and wetlands that remain, most of which are connected to rivers, 65 are listed as Ramsar Wetlands of International Importance. They are also of incredible — sometimes painful — local importance, as reminders of the dispossession suffered by those first peoples and their descendants and evidence of the devastation wrought by drought and dying waterways.

The damming of Western Australia’s Ord River during the 1960s and 1970s captured monsoonal rains within a catchment of over 55,000 square kilometres, creating the largest artificial lake on mainland Australia while destroying sites of cultural significance to the Miriwoong people and changing the ecosystem irrevocably. Barely ten years after the completion of the Ord project, the success of the Save the Franklin campaign in Tasmania is a testament to evolving understanding of the precious nature of waterways. Yet even this triumph was fraught: environmentalists’ argument for preservation of Tasmania’s ‘wilderness’ contained the implication that the land was without people, despite Indigenous habitation for at least 30,000 years.

In this broad-ranging survey of some of Australia’s most well-known, loved, engineered and fought over rivers, from Melbourne’s Yarra to the Alligator rivers of Kakadu, award-winning author Ian Hoskins presents a history of our complex connections to water.

A thoughtful foreword by former prime-ministerial speechwriter Don Watson laments the price rivers have paid for human industry and calls for greater connection with the waterways we rely on for our existence. In 2015, Watson’s The Bush — part memoir, part travelogue, part history — was named the NSW Premier’s Literary Awards book of the year and the Australian Independent Booksellers indie book of the year.

Swainston’s Fishes of Australia

Swainston’s Fishes of Australia

$80.00
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A fascinating overview of the extraordinary diversity of Australia’s marine and freshwater fishes, illustrated with Roger Swainston’s breathtaking artwork.

Roger Swainston’s breathtaking artwork provides a fascinating overview of the extraordinary diversity of Australia’s marine and freshwater fishes.

More than 1500 remarkable illustrations portray every family of fishes ever recorded from Australian waters. The names of all known species are listed alongside detailed information on the taxonomy and biology of each family.

climate

The Climate Cure

$24.99
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Emergencies test governments, organisations and individuals. Although Australia’s prompt, science-led response to COVID-19 has not been perfect, it has saved tens of thousands of lives. But for decades, governments have ignored, ridiculed or understated the advice of scientists on the climate emergency.

Now, in the wake of the megafires of 2020, a time of reckoning has arrived. In The Climate Cure renowned climate scientist Tim Flannery takes aim at those responsible for the campaign of obfuscation and denial that has already cost so many Australian lives and held back action on climate change.

Flannery demands a new approach, based on the nation’s response to COVID-19, that will lead to effective government policies. The Climate Cure is an action plan for our future. We face a fork in the road, and must decide now between catastrophe and survival.