Books and Naturalists - 9780007240845

Natural history, perhaps more than any other pursuit or study, has always relied very heavily on books to help it develop and gain momentum. Without a way of defining and categorizing the many thousands of species of plants and animals, the subject could not exist as it does today. Though met with mixed responses from scientists and naturalists across the centuries, believing the world around them was to be purely "known" and not read, books on natural history have also come to incite passion and excitement in so many of their readers. To have the world around us neatly categorized and named has, to an extent, made it a less daunting place in which to live. In the latest book from the highly acclaimed New Naturalist series, Dr. David Allen explores the world of nature publishing through the course of history, from its very early days in the dawn of publishing, through various significant new discoveries and into the birth of the New Naturalist series itself. Natural history is an area that is constantly developing and improving as our own understanding of the world develops, and as this fascinating book explores, publishing is always standing by to record and present this to its readers.