The Living Planet (Inscribed by Author)

ATTENBOROUGH, David. The Living Planet: A Portrait of the Earth. London: Collins/BBC, 1984.

Large 4to. Illustrated boards. Unclipped pictorial dust jacket. 320 pp., profusely illustrated throughout in colour. 320pp. Second printing. Inscribed by the author on the half-title: "For Warren, with best wishes."

The Living Planet followed Life on Earth as both a television series and a book, shifting the frame from the history of life to the diversity of habitats that sustain it — the deep oceans, the frozen poles, the great forests, the deserts and grasslands and mountain ranges of the Earth. Where Life on Earth had told the story of evolution across geological time, The Living Planet attended to the world as it exists now: the extraordinary range of environments that life has colonised, and the equally extraordinary adaptations that allow organisms to survive in each of them. Published five years before the word "biodiversity" had entered common use, and a decade before climate change had become a subject of mainstream concern, the series and its companion volume were among the first works of popular natural history to situate the natural world explicitly within a framework of human responsibility. The inscription places this copy in the hands of a personal recipient.

Near fine in unclipped dust jacket. An overall clean and bright copy; some very mild toning here and there.

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Catalogue Number: HH000597