Description

A BBC RADIO 4 BOOK OF THE WEEK
LONGLISTED FOR THE HISTORICAL WRITERS’ ASSOCIATION NON-FICTION CROWN AWARD

‘Splendid’ GUARDIAN
‘Utterly fascinating’ ROBERT MACFARLANE
‘A scientific life as dissonant as it was remarkable’ FINANCIAL TIMES

Drawing together the many influences which shaped his life and thinking, The Many Lives of James Lovelock is a unique biography of one of the most important scientists of the modern age and the father of Gaia Theory.

Based on over eighty hours of interviews with Lovelock and unprecedented access to his personal papers and scientific archive, Jonathan Watts has written a definitive and revelatory biography of the fascinating, sometimes contradictory man who changed the way we see the world.

Publisher Review

This splendid, balanced biography testifies to the pros and cons of scientific mavericks * * Guardian * * A scientific life as dissonant as it was remarkable. Watts [ . . . ] nimbly parses the brilliance and flaws of a man whose interdisciplinary interests spanned vast areas of twentieth-century research * * Financial Times * * Utterly fascinating – a beautifully braided account of the life of a maverick, prophetic genius. Jonathan Watts has turned Lovelock’s greatest idea into literary form, giving us a Gaian biography in which Lovelock’s discoveries are understood as always occurring in relation – to people, to places and to the Earth itself — ROBERT MACFARLANE In this comprehensive biography, Jonathan Watts presents a well-researched chronicle of a complicated life, marked by professional success, controversy and some personal failings. Watts tells Lovelock’s story with admiration and compassion, but also with an honesty that embeds both success and failure in the complexities of being gifted, and human * * Times Literary Supplement * * In his tender and searching new biography of Lovelock, based on eighty hours of interviews with his subject, Jonathan Watts, global environment editor at the Guardian, embraces this multiplicity. [ . . . ] If you want a rounded sense of the man, this book provides one beautifully * * Economist * *