Soldiers' first-hand accounts of Second World War active service invariably make inspiring and exciting reading but Mines, Bombs, Bullets and Bridges is exceptional for several reasons. First, Brian Moss's role as a bomb disposal specialist was especially hazardous. Secondly, he was in the thick of the action from the start, dealing with unexploded ordnance during the London blitz. He was then deployed as a frontline sapper to North Africa and onto Sicily before landing on Gold Beach on D-...

The Broads discusses the history of the Broads, the waters in the past and the waters now, the people who come into contact with and influence these waterways, and what the future holds for this small but important area of the countryside. This edition is exclusive to newnaturalists.comThis book gives a comprehensive account of the history of the Broads, an area of great interest to natural historians and tourists alike.Broadland is set mostly in Norfolk and partly in Suffo...

Another volume in the popular New Naturalist series, this book gives a comprehensive account of the natural history of Britain and Ireland’s inland waters, many of which are popular holiday destinations.The study of life in British lakes and rivers has been traditionally neglected in natural history publications, and yet the intricacies of plant and animal ecology as a whole can be readily studied in a pond or lake. Not since Macan and Worthington’s landmark publication in 1951, Li...

Ponds and small lakes support an extremely rich biodiversity of fascinating organisms. Many people have tried pond-dipping and encountered a few unfamiliar creatures, such as dragonfly nymphs and caddisfly larvae. However, there is a far richer world of microscopic organisms, such as diatoms, desmids and rotifers, which is revealed in this book. Anyone with access to a microscope can open up this hidden dimension. Identification keys are provided so that readers can identify, explore and s...

A blend of history, science, philosophy, and environmentalism, The Tree is an engaging and elegant look at the life of the tree and what modern research tells us about their future.There are redwoods in California that were ancient by the time Columbus first landed, and pines still alive that germinated around the time humans invented writing. There are Douglas firs as tall as skyscrapers, and a banyan tree in Calcutta as big as a football field.Fr...

This book accompanies the landmark television series Kingdom of Plants 3D: With David Attenborough.In the last 500 million years, plants have undertaken an epic journey that has not only spanned the ages but has altered the very make-up of the planet. It was a journey that began in a dark and barren world, and has culminated in a planet that is draped in rich colours, and overflowing with a diversity of mystifying orchids, exploding seed pods and snapping carnivorous plants.

The soil is one of the great unsung disappearing resources, with over 100m tonnes being destroyed every year. This edition is exclusive to newnaturalists.comThe soil is the work place of farmers and gardeners, but it is also a fascinating environment inhabited by insects that can leap into the air to a record height, multilegged scavengers that are vital to the decomposition of plant matter and the long, thin, entwining strands of thousands of species of fungi.Although soil...

Slugs and snails are part of the great Phylum Mollusca, a group that contains creatures as varied as the fast-moving squid or the sedentary clams, cockles and mussels. The largest group, however, are the gastropods, animals originally with a single foot and a single coiled shell.They are the only group of molluscs to have representatives living on land as well as in the sea and freshwaters. This book is about the slugs and snails that live on land.For creatures living on la...

An eye-opening and vital account of the future of our earth and our civilisation if current rates of global warming persist, by the highly acclaimed author of ‘High Tide’.Picture yourself a few decades from now, in a world in which average temperatures are three degrees higher than they are now. On the edge of Greenland, rivers ten times the size of the Amazon are gushing off the ice sheet into the north Atlantic. Displaced victims of North Africa's drought establish a new colony o...

Only God can make a tree,” wrote Joyce Kilmer in one of the most celebrated of poems. In Tree: A Life Story, authors David Suzuki and Wayne Grady extend that celebration in a biography” of this extraordinary - and extraordinarily important - organism. A story that spans a millennium and includes a cast of millions but focuses on a single tree, a Douglas fir, Tree describes in poetic detail the organism’...

This ebook edition does not include illustrations.An awe-inspiring journey through the eons and across the globe, in search of visible traces of evolution in the living creatures which have survived from earlier times and whose stories speak to us of seminal events in the history of life.The history of life on Earth is far older – and far odder – than many of us realise. In ‘Survivors’, acclaimed author Richard Fortey traces this history not through fossil records, but in t...

The epic story of the beginning of life on Earth from the much loved and respected naturalist, writer and broadcaster, Sir David Attenborough.Spanning billions of years, Attenborough's time-travelling narrative brings the reader face to face with the first animals that ever existed. By using the latest technology, we are finally able to see for ourselves how these early animals would have looked like and how they would have lived. Attenborough also shows us how some of the evolutio...