Otherlands

Reviews

“A poet among paleontologists . . . Think of a series of immense and immersive museum dioramas, with no glass separating you from the action. . . . The narrative becomes shockingly real and immediate, as individual dramas and entire, vibrant panoramas unfold in what feels like real time.”—The Wall Street Journal

“Written with gusto and bravado . . . Otherlands is a verbal feast. You feel like you are there on the Mammoth Steppe, some 20,000 years ago, as frigid winds blow off the glacial front.”—Steve Brusatte, Scientific American

“Halliday’s brilliantly imaginative reconstructions, his deft marshalling of complex science, offers a thrilling experience of deep-time nature for pop-science buffs.”—Library Journal (starred review)

“Halliday takes an energizing spin through Earth’s past in his magnificent debut. . . . This show-stopping work deserves wide readership.”—Publishers Weekly (starred review)

“Otherlands is one of those rare books that are both deeply informative and daringly imaginative. It will change the way you look at the history of life, and perhaps also its future.”—Elizabeth Kolbert, author of Under a White Sky: The Nature of the Future

“Kaleidoscopic and evocative . . . [Halliday] takes quiet fossil records and complex scientific research and brings them alive—Maybe most important, Otherlands is a timely reminder of our planet’s impermanence and what we can learn from the past.”—Andrea Wulf, author of The Invention of Nature

“A book of almost unimaginable riches . . . This is an utterly serious piece of work, meticulously evidence-based and epically cinematic. Or rather, beyond cinematic. The writing is so palpably alive.”—The Sunday Times (U.K.)
 
“A fascinating journey through Earth’s history . . . To read Otherlands is to marvel not only at these unfamiliar lands and creatures, but also that we have the science to bring them to life in such vivid detail.”—New Scientist

“Vivid . . . An intricate analysis of our planet's interconnected past, it is impossible to come away from Otherlands without awe for what may lie ahead.”—Independent

“The best book on the history of life on Earth I have ever read.”—Tom Holland, author of Dominion

“Deep time is very hard to capture—even to imagine—and yet Thomas Halliday has done so in this fascinating volume. He wears his grasp of vast scientific learning lightly; this is as close to time travel as you are likely to get.”—Bill McKibben, author of Falter: Has the Human Game Begun to Play Itself Out?

“Absolutely gripping . . . Earth has been many different worlds over its planetary history, and Thomas Halliday is the perfect tour guide to these past landscapes and the extraordinary creatures that inhabited them.”—Lewis Dartnell, author of Origins: How the Earth’s History Shaped Human History Expand reviews