Thinking Small and Large by Peter Forbes

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Thinking Small and Large by Peter Forbes

'Brilliantly convincing'Stephen Greenblatt, Pulitzer Prize winner for The SwerveThe environmental crisis will not be solved by battery technology alone. Thinking Small and Large reveals the ingenuity of microbes at key stages in life's 4 billion year history and highlights their developing role in resolving our deepest problem: climate change that is flooding and burning our world more menacingly every year. Ground-breaking ongoing research with some of the most ancient bacteria is leading to a parallel carbon economy using engineered bacteria for fuel, food and materials. This would enable rewilding on a vast scale, with the small land footprint of bacterial technologies solving the current conflict in land use between farming and fuel and materials production. In this fascinating and illuminating book, Peter Forbes shines a light on this crucial technology and offers a tantalising glimpse of what is possible. To solve the big problems you have to think small.

Peter Forbes is a science writer and journalist writing mainly on life sciences and natural history. He read chemistry and worked for the Pharmaceutical Society of Great Britain and in natural history publishing before becoming a freelance writer. He lives in London and teaches the Narrative Non-Fiction course at City St George's, University of London


His first full-length non-fiction book, The Gecko's Foot: How Scientists are Taking a Leaf from Nature's Book, a groundbreaking introduction to the new field of engineering and materials solutions inspired by nature, was longlisted for the Royal Society/Aventis Prize. He followed this with Dazzled and Deceived: Mimicry and Camouflage, which won the Warwick Prize for Writing.

SKU Unavailable
ISBN 13 9781837732067
ISBN 10 183773206X
Title Thinking Small and Large
Author Peter Forbes
Condition Unavailable
Binding Type Paperback
Publisher Icon Books
Year published 2026-07-02
Number of pages 256
Cover note Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary.