Charlotte Sleigh Book order

A funny, bold and provocative enquiry into what it means to be human.

"The Paper Zoo traces the varied and vital role of natural history illustration in science and art since the fifteenth century. Sumptuous images from giants of the genre - such as the birds of John J. Audubon, or the insects of Maria Sybilla Merian - accompany less familiar but equally intriguing illustrations from manuscripts, journals, and rare printed books. Together, these works represent a collection of nature's wonders. Birds, butterflies, insects, mammals, reptiles, and fish were immortalised in print; pests and curiosities were wondered at; microorganisms made monsters. Travellers brought home, on paper, exotic creatures. Scholars and hobbyists insisted upon the beauty and significance of native creatures, both wild and domesticated - even cows and clothes moths. Charlotte Sleigh shows how the styles and purposes of natural history illustration evolved, from animal alphabets to the extraordinary productions of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century naturalists and explorers recording and classifying the living world. She pays tribute to the achievements of little-known, unsung painters and colourists, alongside famous artists, in this mighty endeavour of collecting, defining and exhibiting animal life on the page. Here, too, were ironies and contradictions: many naturalists were also hunters, and the dodo and the great auk survive only in paper zoos."--Publisher's description

Charlotte Sleigh's witty, readable Frog provides an entertaining and sometimes shocking account of this much-loved, and much-misunderstood animal. Sleigh weaves the natural history of the frog together with their mythology in a way that has not been done before.

The Bible is bursting with teaching about nature: how God created it, how humans fit into it, and how it is part of his big story of justice, love and redemption. But what does the Bible have to say about the environmental issues that face us?

Ants are legion: at present there are 11,006 species of ant known; they live everywhere in the world except the polar icecaps; and, the combined weight of the ant population has been estimated to make up half the mass of all insects alive today. This title elucidates the cultural reasons behind our varied reactions to these extraordinary insects. schovat popis