The Book of Barely Imagined Beings

Product Description Shortlisted for the Royal Society Winton Prize 2013, the Society of Authors Biology Book Award 2013, and the Best British Book category of the British Book Design and Production Awards 2013. From Axolotl to Zebrafish, discover a host of barely imagined beings: real creatures that are often more astonishing than anything dreamt in the pages of a medieval bestiary. Ranging from the depths of the ocean to the most arid corners of the earth, Caspar Henderson captures the beauty and bizarreness of the many living forms we thought we knew and some we could never have contemplated, inviting us to better imagine the precarious world we inhabit. A witty, vivid blend of pioneering natural history and spiritual primer, infectiously celebratory about life's sheer ingenuity and variety, The Book of Barely Imagined Beings is a mind-expanding, wonder-inducing read. Review In this utterly charming fusion of science and navel-gazing, one discovers creatures that seem to belong to the outer limits of human imagination--including, somewhat surprisingly, humans. There aren't words to describe how beautiful this volume is, or the feelings it evokes. Stunning. --Booksmith This is much more than a basic bestiary. --Pick of the Paperbacks, The Sunday Times This is not just a beautiful book - it is an important one. ***** --Independent on Sunday This extraordinary and exotic book is a hugely important work. Superficially, it can be enjoyed as an expose of the many weird and wonderful creatures we share our planet with. But it is also a profound journey during which we have opportunities to speculate on the much bigger questions: the origins of life, the purpose of consciousness, the destiny of technology and the prospects for human existence beyond our biosphere. --Ecohustler This is not just a beautiful book - it is an important one. ***** --Independent on Sunday The real is often more wondrous than the imaginary. So it proves with Caspar Henderson's beautifully conjured world of barely imagined beings - ranging from the amazing jumping spider to Venus's Girdle, an ancient comb jelly - out now in paperback. --'Best Science Books', New Statesman Henderson jumps smoothly from scientific information to history to fiction to anecdote and uses each creature as a window into the human mission to understand and interpret the world. There is something lovely about a book that takes on so many disciplines and tackles them with confidence. Henderson presents us with something that stays in the memory long after the book is put back on the shelf. --Guardian A series of Montaignesque essays that celebrate the diversity of life while at the same time journeying through the cultural and technological landscape of humanity's achievements - and threats we make on the planet. --'Best Books of the Year', Scotsman Henderson jumps smoothly from scientific information to history to fiction to anecdote and uses each creature as a window into the human mission to understand and interpret the world. There is something lovely about a book that takes on so many disciplines and tackles them with confidence. Henderson presents us with something that stays in the memory long after the book is put back on the shelf. --Guardian 'A glorious A-Z of natural oddities' --Independent 'Caspar Henderson's great bestiary, this book of barely imagined beings, which has recently come out - where growth, and astonishment, and wonder, and effervescence are wildly reconfigured as kinds of virtue' --Robert MacFarlane discusses The Book of Barely Imagined Beings on the Orion Magazine Podcast 'The most beautiful publication I have read in many years. Caspar is a writer of extreme charm, wit and intelligence. The scale of Caspar's ambition is as remarkable as the depth of his reading. Caspar perfectly judged the digression coefficient to keep us on track, though we remain always interested in what sweet madness may be around the corner. His writing is funny and wi