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This is a lovely book focusing on Kate Humble's passion for the countryside and country life. It is a wonderful journey through the trials and tribulations of preserving farming life and what it involved to be a modern smallholder. This is a lovely quick-read for anyone interested in farming, nature or the countryside. This book would be ideal for anyone who enjoys Countryfile or is considering moving to the country.
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.
This book is very reminiscent of Freakonomics, but I preferred the structure of Freakonomics and the chapters felt more gripping and succinct. This was still a very good book, full of fascinating information elucidated from our 'Big Data' era. Many times during reading this book I found myself exclaiming 'wow, did you know...'. Much like Freakonomics, you could feel the authors passion and curiosity come through. I thought the introduction and conclusion really let the book down, especially the conclusion which just seems to ramble.
I would recommend this book for anyone who enjoyed Freakonomics and is interested in the power of Big Data, this would be a great book for economics students, students studying statistics, or STEM subjects, as it is a fascinating look at the hidden meaning revealed in huge data sets.
This was a lovely collection of stories and anecdotes from behind the scenes at the Natural History Museum. It was fascinating to understand the changes of the museum over the years, the relocation of collections and changes in research and conservation within the museum.
This book has been on my 'to read list' for years, after I attended a lecture by Richard Fortey at the Natural History Museum and had my copy signed. It is a fascinating book exploring the hidden world of working in a natural history museum. I liked how to book wandered around from topic to topic, like you are exploring the different hidden rooms and galleries, opening different doors to see what they contain. I enjoyed reading it, and it is something you can dip in and out of. Some chapters were more interesting than others, but there is likely to be something for everyone.
I think this book would appeal to anyone interested in how museums are run or looking to work in a museum, or interested in nature and science, and how science communication has changed over the years. I would recommend this book to young adults who are interested in science and curation.
The theory that would not die was a surprisingly good book, exploring the fascinating story behind Bayes theory. I worked in genetics and have a basic understanding of Bayes, and so it was fascinating to learn more about how this statistical technique was developed.
I did feel the book could have been condensed a little, as it did feel too long and repetitive at times. As a book about a mathematic theorem for causal readers, it does avoid complex equations, however I think it could have benefited from a couple of images or equations to help illustrate the dialog.
Overall, I would recommend this book to anyone studying science, mathematics, statistics, engineering or with an interest in problem-solving.
