David Beerling is the Sorby Professor of Natural Sciences, and Director of the Leverhulme Centre for Climate Change Mitigation at the University of Sheffield. Before this he held a Royal Society University Research Fellowship, where his work on the evolution of life and the physical environment was recognised by the award of the prestigious Philip Leverhulme Prize in earth sciences in 2001. He has published numerous articles in academic journals and is the author of The Emerald Planet (OUP, 2007). This book formed the basis of a major three-part BBC Two television series, How to Grow a Planet. He was elected to the Fellowship of the Royal Society, London, in 2014.
This book does exactly what David Beerling promises in the sub-title - it explains with clarity and passion the extraordinary story of how plants escaped from their ancestral marine habitats and came to dominate terrestrial ecosystems. He also brings to life vividly the huge impact this has had, and continues to have, on all life on earth (including our own) and how we, Homo sapiens, are now threatening our own future existence by the damage we are inflicting on earth's increasingly degraded and fragile ecosystems. * Richard Deverell, Director of the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew * David Beerling takes the reader through the latest scientific advances with both deep knowledge and skilful writing. Plants have shaped the rest of the biological world. He explains why, far from being a nineteenth century science, Beerling explains why botany should lie at the centre of debates about how we deal with the future of the biosphere. * Richard Fortey *