Read by Bob Reed

Human activity has irreversibly changed the natural environment. But the news isn't all bad. It's accepted wisdom today that human beings have permanently damaged the natural world, causing extinction, deforestation, pollution, and of course climate change. But in Inheritors of the Earth, biologist Chris Thomas shows that this obscures a more hopeful truth -- we're also helping nature grow and change. Human cities and mass agriculture have created new places for enterprising animals and plants to live, and our activities have stimulated evolutionary change in virtually every population of living species. Most remarkably, Thomas shows, humans may well have raised the rate at which new species are formed to the highest level in the history of our planet. Drawing on the success stories of diverse species, from the ochre-colored comma butterfly to the New Zealand pukeko, Thomas overturns the accepted story of declining biodiversity on Earth. In so doing, he questions why we resist new forms of life, and why we see ourselves as unnatural. Ultimately, he suggests that if life on Earth can recover from the asteroid that killed off the dinosaurs, it can survive the onslaughts of the technological age. This eye-opening book is a profound reexamination of the relationship between humanity and the natural world. Chris D. Thomas is a professor of conservation biology at the University of York, UK. A prolific writer, he has published 210 scientific journal articles, twenty-nine book chapters, edited one academic book, and has written around twenty magazine and other popular articles since 2000. His works have been cited more than 26,000 times, making him one of the world's most influential ecologists, and his research has been covered on the front pages of the Guardian and Washington Post. He was elected a fellow of the Royal Society in 2012, is a long-standing fellow of the Royal Entomological Society, and received Marsh Awards for Climate Change Research in 2011 and for Conservation Biology in 2004 and the prestigious British Ecological Society President's Medal in 2001. "An immensely significant book. It is fluently written, carefully thought through, ruthlessly argued, neatly illustrated with case studies - and shockingly contrarian."-MattRidley, The Times (Book of the Week) "Thoughtfully argued, full of rich examples... This engaging, provocative and important book paints a refreshingly optimistic picture of life on Earth"-TheGuardian "The inevitability (and pace) of global change demands the sort of fresh thinking that is found in Inheritors of the Earth."-Science Magazine "Inheritors of the Earth collects years of Thomas' field research, illuminating plant and animal species-notably one of his specialties, butterflies-flourishing all over the Earth. Thomas puts big ideas on display."-Nautilus Magazine "His flowing narrative is rich in stories of his fieldwork round the world ... Thomas's vision ... aspires to something nobler, more optimistic."-New Scientist "Fascinating ... Chris Thomas examines our human relationships with nature, bad and good, and sets out a more hopeful truth to current narratives and alarms ... This is a rich and timely tale, fearless too, with examples and cases drawn from ecosystems across the world."-TimesHigher Education "{A} thrilling and uplifting counter to the pessimism of the Anthropocene."-BBCWildlife Magazine "Chris Thomas takes the million-year view of today's human-dominated world. The result is a thoughtful, provocative, and improbably hopeful book."-Elizabeth Kolbert, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of TheSixth Extinction "An immensely significant book. It is fluently written, carefully thought through, ruthlessly argued, neatly illustrated with case studies - and shockingly contrarian."-Matt Ridley, The Times (Book of the Week) "His flowing narrative is rich in stories of his fieldwork round the world ... Thomas's vision ... aspires to something nobler, more optimistic."-

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