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This is a beautiful book, exploring the stories of the many forgotten women fighting for recognition in both science and in the voting booth in the period around the First World War. This book highlights their contribution to science, and their victories and the set-backs. At times I found it overwhelming the number of different names and brief stories, but no book could recount all women’s contributions in depth, and to overlook some in favor of exploring others in more depth is a difficult balance to achieve. I found so many women’s stories compelling and wanting to know more about their life, but so little exists about these women. This is a wonderful book, at times it did seem a little repetitive or dry, but it tells incredible histories of women fighting for independence, education and recognition. I would highly recommend this book to anyone interested in women’s suffrage and to anyone working in science.
I was highly anticipating the release of this book, as it covers the early career of Attenborough and the programs which changes the world of nature documentaries. However, I was disappointed, I think this is due to the book being based on Attenborough's original accounts of what occurred on his Zoo Quest travels, but attitudes towards animals and indigenous people have changed dramatically since then. It was interesting to read his fascinating accounts of rare and exotic animals, often this is quite funny as these animals are now very familiar. A lovely part of this book is the passion and energy of Attenborough in seeking out these animals, and it was fascinating to understand how much harder it was to get to these isolated locations on the planet, such as his fraught journey to Komodo, which is now very accessible to tourists.
I did feel uncomfortable with how the animals were stored in little cages for long periods of time, but you can tell they do care about the animals wellbeing, and did choose to release animals they could not look after.
Overall, it was an interesting book, and wonderful to understand early nature documentaries, but it is a product from the time and so can be a little uncomfortable to modern readers. I would recommend this book to anyone interested in historical nature and conservation, or fans of Attenborough's work.
This is a beautiful book written with great passion, and follows a wonderful journey across the UK to find all 52 species of native orchids. However, it just didn't grab me. This book is definitely written for botanists, because of the amount of plant and Latin names. It would be nice to get to know the author a little more and to have more information about his journey and its challenges, as this is more appealing for a casual reader. I was highly impressed by this challenge as a gap year, and certainly think this would be inspirational for young scientists. I would mostly recommend this book for anyone interested in botany and studying the natural sciences.
