Silent Earth is a well-written and logically structured book, neatly divided into five parts and 21 chapters, none of which run on for too long. Goulson gives you his reasons for why he thinks insects matter, examines the evidence for insect declines, discusses potential causes, and outlines what can be done. His pen is sharp and he is not afraid to lash out in places, but I also found his writing infused with intellectual honesty and a willingness to consider criticism.

An urgent and compelling new book from the bestselling author: his first major work of popular science and environmental activism - part love letter to the insect world, part elegy, part rousing manifesto for change. Interestingly, I found the discussions over insects as a suitable food source for the western population quite thought provoking. Despite his clear love of insects, the author suggests that it is a more environmentally sustainable practice to eat them compared to cattle. And he is completely right. It would be better for us. However, as a vegan I take issue with this because it would be easier (and healthier) just to eat plant matter. His point though is an interesting one and its not something I have ever come across. More reading is required on this subject, but the point raises some interesting ethical dimensions for me. Not to mention how odd it seemed in a book suggesting we avert the insect apocalypse. We shouldn't be creating a new one. A terrific book…A thoughtful explanation of how the dramatic decline of insect species and numbers poses a dire threat to all life on earth.” (Booklist, Starred Review) Silent Earth is a well-written and logically structured book, neatly divided into five parts and 21 chapters, none of which run on for too long. After four earlier books published with Jonathan Cape nothing less was to be expected. Goulson first gives you his reasons for why he thinks insects matter, which are a mixture of both instrumental and intrinsic values. He candidly admits that “ For me, the economic value of insects is just a tool with which to bash politicians over the head” (p. 37), while his reasons for caring about insects are primarily moral. Goulson then examines the evidence for insect declines, discusses potential causes, and outlines what can be done. His pen is sharp and he is not afraid to lash out in places, but I also found his writing infused with intellectual honesty and a willingness to consider criticism.Below : Bluestone 69 being removed to allow a crane access to lift fallen trilithon stones 57 and 58. The supervision of the work raising the great monolith was entrusted to Mr. Detmar Blow, architect. Dr. Gowland, Professor of Mineralogy at the Royal College of Science, took charge of the excavations, and Mr. Carruthers advised upon engineering questions.’

Drawing on thirty years of research, Goulson has written an accessible, fascinating, and important book that examines the evidence of an alarming drop in insect numbers around the world. “If we lose the insects, then everything is going to collapse,” he warned in a recent interview in the New York Times—beginning with humans’ food supply. The main cause of this decrease in insect populations is the indiscriminate use of chemical pesticides. Hence, Silent Earth’s nod to Rachel Carson’s classic Silent Spring which, when published in 1962, led to the global banning of DDT. This was a huge victory for science and ecological health at the time. Enlightening, urgent and funny, Goulson's book is a timely call for action. New Statesman, *Books of the Year* In 1963, two years before I was born, Rachel Carson warned us in her book Silent Spring that we were doing terrible damage to our planet. She would weep to see how much worse it has become. Insect-rich wildlife habitats, such as hay meadows, marshes, heathland and tropical rainforests, have been bulldozed, burned or ploughed to destruction on a vast scale. The problems with pesticides and fertilisers, she highlighted, have become far more acute, with an estimated 3m tonnes of pesticides now going into the global environment every year. Some of these new pesticides are thousands of times more toxic to insects than any that existed in Carson’s day. Soils have been degraded, rivers choked with silt and polluted with chemicals. Climate change, a phenomenon unrecognised in her time, is now threatening to further ravage our planet. These changes have all happened in our lifetime, on our watch, and they continue to accelerate.We must transform our food system. Growing and transporting food so that we all have something to eat is the most fundamental of human activities. The way we do it has profound impacts on our own welfare, and on the environment, so it is surely worth investing in getting it right. There is an urgent need to overhaul the current system, which is failing us in multiple ways. We could have a vibrant farming sector, employing many more people, and focused on sustainable production of healthy food, looking after soil health and supporting biodiversity. Disclosure: The publisher provided a review copy of this book. The opinion expressed here is my own, however. From these observations we may conclude that the mortices in this lintel (and very probably in all the lintels) were prefabricated while the lintel was still on the ground, and that the corresponding tenons on the adjacent uprights were them worked at the correct distance apart. In this instance, however, the accidental breaking away of part of the top of stone 21 increased the span to be bridged between this stone and stone 22, and also drastically reduced the bearing surface on stone 21, on which the two ends of the lintels had still to be supported.

Our planet has coped remarkably well so far with the blizzard of changes we have wrought, but we would be foolish to assume that it will continue to do so. A relatively small proportion of species have gone extinct so far, but almost all wild species now exist in numbers that are a fraction of their former abundance, subsisting in degraded and fragmented habitats and subjected to a multitude of ever-changing human-made problems. We do not understand anywhere near enough to be able to predict how much resilience is left in our depleted ecosystems, or how close we are to tipping points beyond which collapse becomes inevitable. In Paul Ehrlich’s “rivets on a plane” analogy, we may be close to the point where the wing falls off. The Quiet Earth", Cineforum, 29: 19, 1989, Infatti, The Quiet Earth è quasi il remake del classico The World, the Flesh and the Devil…My informant is a native of Pimperne, and her relatives have been associated with the village for many years. Supposedly several members of the family have been overtaken by the ghost. It is thought to be a dog, which dashes along the Salisbury road from the foot of Letton Hill towards Pimperne, with much rattling of chains. When brave folks have stretched out a hand to grasp the chains of the ghostly animal, all they’ve felt was the brush of a soft velvety coat against the hand as the totally invisible creature careered madly on its way’. The book’s greatest strength is its insistence that change is possible, and that everyone can make it happen in small and large ways. Goulson steps seamlessly between knowledgeable professor and impassioned environmentalist, and you can’t help but get on board.”— Sierra Magazine Below: ‘Bluestone 69 of the the Bluestone Horseshoe being temporarily removed during work to re-erect trilithon stones 57 and 58.’– Historic England.

William Barnes, the self-taught Dorset writer and poet, concisely described folklore in his ‘fore-say’ to Dorsetshire Folk-lore by John Symonds Udal as: ‘Folklore, taken in broad meaning, is a body of home-taught lore, received by the younger folk from elder ones in common life, and in the forms of knowledge or faith, or mindskills and handskills’. Perhaps the most problematic study of them all is the one that precipitated the insect apocalypse frenzy — a 2017 study co-authored by Goulson with 11 other scientists that compared insect populations in certain German nature reserves over the last quarter century. Its dramatic finding — that the biomass of flying insects had declined an astonishing 76 percent in 27 years — together with Goulson’s eager goosing of the press — generated the apocalyptic headlines he was clearly seeking....Eye-opening, inspiring and riveting, Silent Earth is part love letter to the insect world, part elegy, part rousing manifesto for a greener planet. It is a call to arms for profound change at every level – in government policy, agriculture, industry and in our own homes and gardens. Although time is running out, it is not yet too late for insect populations to recover. We may feel helpless in the face of many of the environmental issues that loom on our horizon, but Goulson shows us that we can all take simple steps to encourage insects and counter their destruction. A meeting was held at Stonehenge with Sir Edmund Antrobus the owner of the monument in March 1901 (reported in the Times newspaper on 13 April 1901) to discuss the question of the best and wisest steps to be taken to ensure the safe-keeping and future preservation of the monument. The advice given by the representatives of the Society of Antiquaries, the Society for the Protection of Ancient Monuments and the Wiltshire Archaeological society was: In the tradition of Rachel Carson’s groundbreaking environmental classic Silent Spring, an award-winning entomologist and conservationist explains the importance of insects to our survival, and offers a clarion call to avoid a looming ecological disaster of our own making.