What is a tree? As this celebration of the trees shows, they are our countryside; our ancestors descended from them; they gave us air to breathe. This title explores the hidden role of trees in our everyday lives - and how our future survival depends on them.

This text can be read at many levels. Not least it is an extraordinary inventory - an illustrated summary of all the Earthly creatures that have ever lived. Whatever living thing you come across, from E-coli to an oak tree or an elephant, this book will show you what kind of creature it is, and how it relates to all others. Yet there are far too many creatures to present merely as a catalogue. The list of species already described is vast enough - nearly two million - but there could in reality be as many as 30 million different animals, plants, fungi and protists - and perhaps another 400...

The modern world is dominated by ideas that are threatening to kill us: that life is one long battle from conception to grave; that all creatures, including human beings, are driven by their selfish DNA; that the universe is just stuff, for us to use at will.

These ideas are seen as emerging from science and hard-nosed philosophy, and become self-fulfilling. They have led us to create a world in perpetual strife, that is unjust and in many ways precarious.

This remarkable book by an experienced author and thinker argues there's another way of looking at the world that...