This book, like the BBC television series on which it is based, is an attempt to give us a history of nature rather than a conventional natural history, and it is told as much as possible in terms of animals and plants alive today. The result is a pageant of life - a re-enactment of 3,500 million years of history with a cast of characters drawn from the whole range of life on earth today.

David Attenborough has received high praise for both the book and the series. This book is a permanent record of one of the most ambitious projects ever undertaken by British television as well as a standard introduction to the study of nature.

'One can hardly conceive a more ambitious undertaking than to represent in a few hundred pages nothing less than the history of life on our planet. The pictures are simply wonderful - the book is an achievement of the artist's eye and the poet's pen. The completeness of the story is really amazing.' Konrad Lorenz

'Quite simply, this is the best intro- duction to natural history ever written

The text has the vivid, crisp directness of a professional communicator at the height of hispowers.'Desmond Morris

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