- Paperback: 336 pages
- Publisher: Allen Lane (3 Mar 2011)
- Language French
- ISBN-10: 1846143969
- ISBN-13: 978-1846143960
- Product Dimensions: 21.2 x 13.4 x 2.6 cm
- Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars See all reviews (28 customer reviews)
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: 217,227 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
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Product Description
Review
How lucky we are to be alive ... Tim Flannery tells this extraordinary story ... he brings together planetary history, evolutionary biology, his own practical experience ... a triumph of interdisciplinarity ... deserves to be widely read. (Crispin Tickell Financial Times )
His most ambitious book so far ... a twin biography, of humanity and the planet it inhabits, but that description is inadequate. Mr Flannery's subject is the likely fate of humankind, and whether the powers granted to modern civilisation by science and technology will prove to be its downfall or its salvation ... worth reading. (The Economist )
This is a wonderful book. It is a letter from perhaps the world's most thoughtful, and certainly most eloquent, environment scientist on how we as a species might survive as chief stewards of planet Earth ... Here on Earth is a must for optimists and pessimists alike. (Fred Pearce New Scientist )
On all counts, we need a paradigm shift ... Flannery excellently and entertainingly explains the science that is needed to achieve this. Here on Earth deserves to be widely read, and it will be good for the world if it is. (Colin Tudge Independent )
Flannery's writing never fails to please. His authorial voice is always engaging, and he has an eye for memorable details that help ordinary readers make models in their minds of how nature works. (Marek Kohn Guardian )
His most ambitious book so far ... a twin biography, of humanity and the planet it inhabits, but that description is inadequate. Mr Flannery's subject is the likely fate of humankind, and whether the powers granted to modern civilisation by science and technology will prove to be its downfall or its salvation ... worth reading. (The Economist )
This is a wonderful book. It is a letter from perhaps the world's most thoughtful, and certainly most eloquent, environment scientist on how we as a species might survive as chief stewards of planet Earth ... Here on Earth is a must for optimists and pessimists alike. (Fred Pearce New Scientist )
On all counts, we need a paradigm shift ... Flannery excellently and entertainingly explains the science that is needed to achieve this. Here on Earth deserves to be widely read, and it will be good for the world if it is. (Colin Tudge Independent )
Flannery's writing never fails to please. His authorial voice is always engaging, and he has an eye for memorable details that help ordinary readers make models in their minds of how nature works. (Marek Kohn Guardian )
Product Description
Tim Flannery is here to offer us a change of perspective. And he is here to inspire us. He invites us to consider again our place on earth, what it really means to be alive.
Here on Earth is a revolutionary dual biography of the planet and of our species. Flannery reimagines the history of earth, from its earliest origins as a chaotic ball of elemental gases to the teeming landscape we currently call home. It is a remarkable story. How did life first emerge here? What forces have shaped it? Why did humans come to dominate? And when did we start to have an impact? More importantly, how has this changed us as a species?
The awesome hand of nature has never been better portrayed than in this book. Nor, remarkably, the transformative power of ideas. From the most intense competition for survival, cooperation has emerged. The challenge we now face is to sustain our fragile hold on life.
Our fate is in our own hands. But first we have to realise who we are.
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
17 of 17 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Fingers crossed,
By
This review is from: Here on Earth: A New Beginning (Paperback)
Customer review from the Amazon Vine™ Programme (What's this?)
This book is about the vision of Tim Flannery, an author I've enjoyed in the past. It doesn't seek to examine evidence of the state of the planet and our impact on it, the book is very much about the conclusions Tim has come to about the planet's fractured ecosystems. On the whole it makes a for a fascinating read as he guides us through evolutionary ideas and the concepts of Gaia as he understands them, and talks about the impact of humans from the first day that they stepped off the African continent. Research into the concept of the 'super-organism' that is the modern human civilisation I found particularly interesting and has prompted me to search out more reading on this interesting subject.The book fades towards the end though. I had hoped that it would be bursting with insights and trends that would give hope for the future, instead it tends to drift a little, struggling to find concrete reasons to believe that we'll make it. In the end after a really good few days of reading the conclusion seemed to be no more than 'fingers crossed!'
12 of 12 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Provocative and Absorbing. An interesting addition to the debate,
By
This review is from: Here on Earth: A New Beginning (Paperback)
Customer review from the Amazon Vine™ Programme (What's this?)
Tim Flannery has some impressive credentials and a worthy reputation to his name, so what ever he has to say should be read dispassionately or with an open mind, otherwise you might miss some of points he is making.Having said that for certain readers of this book will divide off into those agreeing, those inspired to come off the fence and those annoyed. To start off with Tim Flannery has a sympathy with the Gaia view of the world, although maybe more as one large interdependent community that one single organism. He refers to civilisations as superorganisms, and draws some comparisons between our communities and those of the ants. He is not comfortable with Richard Dawkins' selfish gene thesis, nor does he embrace the idea of Darwinian `red in tooth and claw' to be the only explanation for the development of Life on Earth. Filled with fascinating details on the history of Life and the interaction of Humanity with other species and new eco-systems he is making the classic environmentalist plea for Humanity to be more careful, sympathetic and empathetic with the rest of the world otherwise it will out very badly for everything; us included. Of course this is not a new theme, but the depth and clarity of his explanations involving a wide and colourful number of examples makes this a most instructive read. Even if you are set in not agreeing with him (and there are aspects I would tentatively question- those superorganisms actually) I am sure you will find facts you were not aware of in the board spectrum of Natural History, which doesn't mean you will be won over, but gosh it's interesting! And we are spared an inevitable apocalypse some authors resort to, which tends to negate the reason for their writing; Tim Flannery believes the damage can be healed by using our own accumulated intelligence, but it is up to us. Our choice. I reckon this to be one of the better contributions to the number of the environmental debates currently active and would recommend it to anyone with a genuine concern from any side of the argument, because as well as being informative this is such an entertaining read.
5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
An education and a necessary corrective,
By F. M. Muse "headspace traveller" (Leicester, Leics United Kingdom) - See all my reviews (VINE VOICE) (REAL NAME)
This review is from: Here on Earth: A New Beginning (Paperback)
Customer review from the Amazon Vine™ Programme (What's this?)
Reading the reviews to date, I'm somewhat intimidated by them, so much so that further comment might seem redundant, given their comprehensive nature.I like the idea of mnemes, regardless of spelling, and I would suggest that this book ought to be required reading for every child over the age of 11, not just in the west, but anywhere the book can be distributed. This is also a book that ought to be read with Ian Morris "Why the West Rules" and Susan George's "Whose Crisis, Whose Future". Taken together these books make for a more unified narrative than can be expected of any one volume. The spirit of optimism, the cornucopia of ideas, of possibilities, and the simple belief in our better selves, make this book a powerful antidote to many of the doomsayers and a very necessary corrective to the Darwin-Dawkins settlement. Having said that, we are running out of time, and just as power generation now and into the future needs to embrace a mix of fossil and nuclear fuels together with renewables, so any attempt to rein in existing environmental instabilities, needs to include and engage with techniques of population management as part of the mix. This appears to be one of the last great taboos in our society and we need to get over it and start to act. Tim Flannery speaks of a projected declining global population from 2050 onwards, yet acknowledges the uncertainties inherent in these projections. If the projections are wrong and there is no substantive change in human reproduction, world population will stand at a little over nine billion. Long before then, I would suggest that life as we know it, in the west, will have become largely untenable. To the extent that I have understood them, neither James Lovelock or Jared Diamond appear believe that we can emerge from the current situation with global civilisation intact. We have it seems, already run out of time, particularly with respect to the climate change tipping point. Crucially, Tim Flannery scarcely takes account of both the power and the intellectual inertia of the people with the means to implement the many good ideas presented in the book, never mind the blind self-interest, outright hostility and determination to adhere to the winner takes all philosophy of this group. To all practical intents and purposes this includes bankers, the very rich and politicians, pretty much all of whom subscribe to various flavours of social Darwinism. Susan George is very strong on the influence of these groups and the global institutions that are their creatures, institutions that militate against a fairer, more equitable social paradigm for a global society. As I suggested at the beginning, Flannery's ideas constitute a new and vital mneme in themselves and if we can introduce this book to the worlds children, they will be in a much stronger position to both influence and deal with the outcomes that inevitably lie ahead.
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