Well-known for her installations and major public art commissions that engage with architectural and biological forms, acclaimed Australian artist Janet Laurence is fascinated by the interplay of plant species, animals and people. In her work, represented in all major collections in Australia, Laurence constructs atmospheric spaces that allow for deep reflection on questions of climate change, ecology and extinction. Here, Prudence Gibson offers a new understanding of Laurence's BioArt and...

** Longlisted, 2023 Mark & Evette Moran Nib Literary Award **The Plant Thieves reveals remarkable stories from the National Herbarium of New South Wales - its people, its archives and its most guarded specimens.Who gets to collect plants, name them, propagate them, extract their chemicals, sell them and use them? Whose knowledge is it? And what can the people that work with plants, just outside the law, teach us ab...

'Furari Flores' is a multisensory arts project celebrating the wonder of plants from regional Queensland artist, Cara-Ann Simpson.Featuring essays by Dr Louise Martin-Chew, Dr Prudence Gibson, Cat Jones, A/Prof Kyle Jenkins and Cara-Ann Simpson. 'Furari Flores' explores the themes of environmental art, data visualisation, technology, geometry and meditation. Enter a world of multisensory botanical magic and join Cara-Ann on a journey of deep listening, Earth admiration and plant lo...

What do you need to know to prosper as a people for at least 65,000 years? The First Knowledges series provides a deeper understanding of the expertise and ingenuity of Indigenous Australians. For millennia, Indigenous Australians harvested this continent in ways that can offer contemporary environmental and economic solutions. Bill Gammage and Bruce Pascoe demonstrate how Aboriginal people cultivated the land through manipulation of water flows, vegetation and firestick practice. Not sole...

An Post Irish Book Award Winner'An inspiring vision' Manchán Magan'The stories are absorbing, the writing charismatic and the ideas thought-provoking' Irish IndependentOn the Beara peninsula in West Cork, a temperate rainforest flourishes. It is the life work of Eoghan Daltun, who had a vision to rewild a 73-acre farm he bought, moving there from Dublin with his family in 2009.A...

What do you need to know to prosper as a people for at least 65,000 years? The First Knowledges series provides a deeper understanding of the expertise and ingenuity of Indigenous Australians. Plants are the foundation of life on Earth. Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples have always known this to be true. For millennia, reciprocal relationships with plants have provided both sustenance to Indigenous communities and many of the materials needed to produce a complex array of techn...

Since the dawn of human civilization, forests have provided us with food, resources, and energy. The history of human development is also one of forest loss and transformation, and yet even in our increasingly urbanized societies we remain surprisingly dependent on forests for a wide range of goods and services. Moreover, forests still retain a remarkable hold on our environmental values. In an era of continuing tropical deforestation and temperate forest resurgence, and in the midst of un...

A sweeping account of Australia's wet tropical rainforest country, from deep time to the legendary time of Australia's first peoples; from the killing times and maniacal destruction of the forests by European settlers, to the present time of growing awareness of forests as the life-force of the planet.Shortlisted for The Courier-Mail People's Choice Queensland Book of the Year Award 2023Wreathed in morning mist, the rainforest is a...

Laughing Kookaburras are the largest kingfishers in the world, and Blue-winged Kookaburras are not far behind. Their size and distinctive shape and posture make them easily recognisable; their comical and personable characters make them readily memorable. They are able to live in a wide variety of habitats, and adapt to living around humans relatively well. This cheerful familiarity has caused them to figure prominently in the psyches and folklores of all peoples who have inhabited Austral...

Apes look and act far more like humans than other animals. Apes are super apes, just as apes are super monkeys. Portraits of the apes provide some glimpses into our closest cousins.

A personal journey into our evolving relationships with animals, and a thought-provoking look at how those bonds are being challenged and reformed across disciplinesWe love animals, but does that make the animals' lives any happier? With factory farms, climate change and deforestation, this might be the worst time in history to be an animal. If we took animals' experiences seriously, how could we eat, think and live differently?How to Love Animals ...

How did the dog become man’s best friend? A celebrated anthropologist unearths the mysterious origins of the unique partnership that rewrote the history of both species.Dogs and humans have been inseparable for more than 40,000 years. The relationship has proved to be a pivotal development in our evolutionary history. The same is also true for our canine friends; our connection with them has had much to do with their essential nature and survival. How and why did h...