Results for 'roland ennos'

1. Roland Ennos

The Age of Wood

1. Roland Ennos

The Wood Age

When our ancestors came down from the trees, they brought the trees with them and remade the world. ‘A stunning book on the incalculable debt humanity owes wood…’ John Carey, The Sunday Times

1. Roland , Ennos

The Wood Age

When our ancestors came down from the trees, they brought the trees with them and remade the world. 'A stunning book on the incalculable debt humanity owes wood...' John Carey, The Sunday Times

1. Roland , Ennos

The Age of Wood

A groundbreaking examination of the role that wood and trees have played in our global ecosystem—including human evolution and the rise and fall of empires—in the bestselling tradition of Yuval Harari’s Sapiens and Mark Kurlansky’s Salt.As the dominant species on Earth, humans have made astonishing progress since our ancestors came down from the trees. But how did the descendants of small primates manage to walk upright, become top predators, and populate the world? How were humans able to develop civilizations and produce a globalized economy? Now, in The Age of Wood, Roland Ennos shows for the first time that the key to our success has been our relationship with wood. Brilliantly synthesizing recent research with existing knowledge in fields as wide-ranging as primatology, anthropology, archaeology, history, architecture, engineering, and carpentry, Ennos reinterprets human history and shows how our ability to exploit wood’s unique properties has profoundly shaped our bodies and minds, societies, and lives. He takes us on a sweeping ten-million-year journey from Southeast Asia and West Africa where great apes swing among the trees, build nests, and fashion tools; to East Africa where hunter gatherers collected their food; to the structural design of wooden temples in China and Japan; and to Northern England, where archaeologists trace how coal enabled humans to build an industrial world. Addressing the effects of industrialization—including the use of fossil fuels and other energy-intensive materials to replace timber—The Age of Wood not only shows the essential role that trees play in the history and evolution of human existence, but also argues that for the benefit of our planet we must return to more traditional ways of growing, using, and understanding trees. A winning blend of history and science, this is a fascinating and authoritative work for anyone interested in nature, the environment, and the making of the world as we know it.

1. Roland Ennos
2. Liz Sheffield

Plant Life

This work makes sense of the diversity of plants by treating them not just as photosynthetic factories, but as living organisms that are the survivors of millions of years of evolutionary struggle.

1. Roland Ennos

Solid Biomechanics

Reviews the mechanical design of organisms. With a physical approach and a minimum of mathematics, this book introduces readers to the world of structural mechanics and sheds light on an array of mechanical adaptations that link creatures as dissimilar as bacteria, plants, and animals.