Deep Jungle

Deep Jungle is an exploration of the most alien and feared habitat on earth. Beginning with man’s earliest recorded adventures, Fred Pearce takes us high into the canopy—home to two-thirds of all the creatures on our planet. Pearce also uncovers secrets about how evolution works, the intricate links that connect us all, and possible new clues to human origins. The jungle holds the key to our future foods and medicines, our climate, and our understanding of how life works; yet, environmentalists say we are on the verge of destroying the last rainforests, and with them, the planet’s evolutionary crucible—maybe even its ability to sustain life. But nature has a way of reclaiming itself, at the ultimate cost to man, and it may do so again. Fred Pearce, former news editor at New Scientist, is currently the magazine’s environment and development consultant. An award-winning journalist, he also writes regularly for the Independent and The Times Higher Education Supplement and, in the US, for The Boston Globe and Foreign Policy.