For nearly four billion years, life on Earth has found new ways to adapt, reproduce and thrive, taking on new forms to meet the environment of the moment. Human impact on the planet, and the potentially devastating threat of climate change, have stressed that adaptability as never before. Yet life still finds a way. Animals, plants and insects rise to the challenge and are still adapting, reproducing and thriving, even in our rapidly transforming environment. In their example we may just find ways that we too can adapt, ways to stop the destruction we're causing to the planet.

In Nature's Genius David Farrier takes us on a profound journey into this ever-changing natural world. What we discover could change us. The ways animals adjust to the urban landscape can help us design sustainable cities. Examining other intelligences can help us remake our economies. Learning from bacterial evolution may help solve our waste problem. Synthetic biology could rescue animals from the brink of extinction. Thinking in timescales of the natural world could help us choose a better future.

As life on Earth changes, the question is can we change too? Can we remake the world to be fit for all life to thrive once more?

About the Author

David Farrier is Professor of Literature and the Environment at the University of Edinburgh. David's first book, Footprints: In Search of Future Fossils, looked at the marks we are leaving on the planet and how these might appear in the fossil record in the deep future. It was named by both The Times and Telegraph as a book of the year, earned praise from Robert Macfarlane and Margaret Atwood, and has been translated into ten other languages. He has had pieces published in the Atlantic, BBC Future, Emergence, Prospect, Daily Telegraph, Orion and Washington Post. He has spoken at numerous online events, has given an invited lecture at the Royal Geographical Society, and has appeared on radio and podcasts such as BBC Free Thinking and Little Atoms.

@David_Farrier

Reviews
Nature's Genus is a wide-ranging work of energy, sensitivity and subtle intelligence that offers glimpses of genuine possibility and hope -- CASPAR HENDERSON
A wonderful exploration of nature's unrivalled ability to adapt to changing environments, and what we might belatedly learn from these interconnected ecosystems that we're also a part of as we navigate a more perilous Anthropocene. Full of fascinating details and insightful observations about the richly diverse behaviours and interactions of the world's extraordinary creatures -- GAIA VINCE
Praise for Footprints: 'A haunting study of the fossils that twenty-first-century life will leave behind * * Times Literary Supplement * *
A brilliant, unsettling book; a deep-time delving into our future fossils - an examination of what humans have inherited, and what we might leave as our long-term legacies upon - within - the Earth. Subtly thought and beautifully written -- ROBERT MACFARLANE
Fascinating peek into the deep future! Our distant ancestors left beautiful stone objects. What will we leave? Surprising answers! -- MARGARET ATWOOD, on Twitter
Farrier's prose glitters. His journey takes in marvels * * Economist * *
An oddly hopeful exploration of deep time and a world doing just fine without us * * New Scientist * *
As we hurtle into the Anthropocene, blindly at the helm of this inconstant planet, Farrier gives us our bearings within the landscape of deep time. Eons buckle under his pen: the world before us made vivid; the paradox of our permanence and impermanence visceral. Stunning -- GAIA VINCE
Darkly, exquisitely, oh-so-carefully, David Farrier lays out the future we can see from here: the ice singing its own dissolution, the plastic without a memory that will last for eternity, the deepest ocean and the highest air which will remember our carbon traces in millions of years to come. Farrier is an exacting dissector of human culture and natural history; his book is a brilliant and surprising beautiful requiem for what we have lost, but also, crucially, what we might save from the wreckage -- PHILIP HOARE
A signal book, and a profoundly significant one, of warnings and prophecies, of explorations and discoveries. With wry, persuasive intelligence it surveys the landscapes and cityscapes, the art and the literature, of this pivotal moment in the Anthropocene -- GAVIN FRANCIS



Book Information
ISBN 9781837260539
Author David Farrier
Format Hardback
Page Count 320
Imprint Canongate Books
Publisher Canongate Books