This is a uniquely beautiful and engrossing volume, absolutely drenched in knowledge and love - and more loaded with narrative than any wildlife book I've encountered before. It has literature, history, philosophy, folklore, travelogue, biography... Anyone who is interested in natural history will want a copy. -- Jim Crace
Birds and People is one of the great naturalist books of our time. -- Christopher Hart * Sunday Times *
Full of intense pleasure. -- Derwent May * The Times *
A sumptuous encyclopedia of humanity's relationship with birds. * Sunday Times *
Encyclopedic and spellbinding... The sparkling prose never flags, and it is marvelously illustrated by the photographs of David Tipling. * Independent *
Sumptuous and poignant... Birds and People is a beautiful anthem to the history and diversity of the relationship between birds and human beings. -- Ruth Padel * Independent *
If ever a book was timely, it is this gorgeously produced 600-page compendium of ornith- logical facts, images, myths and narratives. -- John Burnside * New Statesman *
David Tipling's photographs...are irresistible. They are a feast of colour, history, display and insight... This treasure possesses the timelessness and the authority of a genuine magnum opus. It is encyclopaedic in its reach, covering birds in art, literature, dress, heraldry, industry, commerce, cooking, hunting, farming, philosophy, folklore and delight. It stretches way beyond natural history, but that is in there too. A book for all birds and all people. -- John Lister-Kaye * Scotland on Sunday *
In 600 pages enlivened with David Tipling's photographs, Mark Cocker has built a magnificent avian ark: a book of everything birdy and birdish, and worth saving from countless and enduring entanglements with Homo sapiens... These pages are rich, sustaining and magically suggestive - all at the same time. -- Tim Dee * BBC Wildlife *
Birds and People is primarily a way of looking at our own complex history, through the prism of nature. It is also a beautiful volume, not least because of David Tipling's excellent photographs... The results are stunning. -- Stephen Moss * Sunday Telegraph *
Packed with beauty, curiosity, fascination and wonder on every page, Birds and People is probably best not wolfed down but savoured bit by bit. It is a truly exceptional work, soaring in its scope, boundless in its interest, with an ambition matched only by its achievement... Strikes me as the sort of masterpiece that only comes along once or twice a decade. -- Craig Brown * Mail on Sunday *
A tapestry that is by turns fascinating, delightful, surprising and grim. Birds and People rewards the idle browser and will be an important addition to the shelves of anyone who cares about how we interact with the non-human world or what sort of creatures we are becoming... David Tipling's photographs...are gorgeous. -- Caspar Henderson * Literary Review *
A vast, ambitious and surprisingly personal overview of what birds mean to human beings... Birds and People is a dense, weighty delight, to be dipped into again and again as curiosity commands. Written with grace, conscientious stewardship and unfettered love, the book is a transformative look at the feathered dinosaurs that, despite all we have done to them, still grace our fields, forests and skies. Birds and People is an encyclopedia with a heart. -- Julie Zickefoose * Wall Street Journal *
A fascinating examination of the relationship between the human and avian worlds... This important book is a clarion call to treasure our birds - or risk losing them forever. * Daily Mail *
Sumptuous and richly informative. -- John Carey * Sunday Times *
