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Pathless ForestCondition: BRAND NEW ISBN: 9781802062427 Format: B format paperback Year: 2025 Publisher: Penguin UK Description: An acclaimed botanist reveals our 'plant blindness' when thinking of conservation, with his obsessive search for Rafflesia in the rainforests of SE Asia As a child, Chris Thorogood dreamed of seeing Rafflesia the plant with the world's largest flowers. He crafted life size replicas in an abandoned cemetery, carefully bringing them to life
Condition: BRAND NEWISBN: 9781802062427
Format: B-format paperback
Year: 2025
Publisher: Penguin UK
Description:
An acclaimed botanist reveals our 'plant blindness' when thinking of conservation, with his obsessive search for Rafflesia in the rainforests of SE Asia
As a child, Chris Thorogood dreamed of seeing Rafflesia - the plant with the world's largest flowers. He crafted life-size replicas in an abandoned cemetery, carefully bringing them to life with paper and paint. Today he is a botanist at the University of Oxford's Botanic Garden and has dedicated his life to studying the biology of such extraordinary plants, working alongside botanists and foresters in Southeast Asia to document these huge, mysterious blooms.
Pathless Forest is the story of his journey to study and protect this remarkable plant - a biological enigma, still little understood, which invades vines as a leafless parasite and steals its food from them. We join him on a mind-bending adventure, as he faces a seemingly impenetrable barrier of weird, wonderful and sometimes fearsome flora; finds himself smacking off leeches, hanging off vines, wading through rivers; and following indigenous tribes into remote, untrodden rainforests in search of Rafflesia's ghostly, foul-smelling blooms, more than a metre across.
We depend on plants for our very existence, but two in five of the world's species are threatened with extinction - nobody knows how many species of Rafflesia might already have disappeared through deforestation. Pathless Forest is part thrilling adventure story and part an inspirational call to action to safeguard a fast-disappearing wilderness. To view plants in a different way, as vital for our own
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4.4 ★★★★★
Based on 245 reviews
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Product Reviews
★★★★★ 5
An Enigma
I became interested in the life of Deng Xiaoping after reading THE TRAGEDY OF LIBERATION by Frank Dikotter and AVOIDING THE FALL by Michael Pettis. Deng is an enigma. He was a key player in the Chinese leadership from the earliest days. He was one of the core revolutionary leaders and one that was heavily involved in directing military campaigns leading to liberation. Afterward, he was the administrator for Sichuan and southwest China and implemented Maoist programs that led to mass starvation and incalculable human suffering. So, how was it possible for Deng Xiaoping to emerge as supreme leader of China, opening up the country to 4 decades of unprecedented growth? Did he learn from the failures of earlier policies? If so, what led to his change in thinking and when did it happen? Or was he always a pragmatist and a loyal follower? And if his thinking did change, how was he not one of the many leaders who were expelled from the Party and sent to prison or executed? It seems highly unlikely that a country that went through the purges, the witch hunts and the upheavals like the Cultural Revolution could have produced a leader of the stature of Deng Xiaoping capable of implementing the policy reforms that have led to China's 4 decades of unprecedented growth. These are the questions that motivated me to tackle this 800-page biography.
Ezra Vogel is one of the world's pre-eminent China scholars. His knowledge of the events, people and places as well as the research of other scholars is second to none. He uses this knowledge combined with written accounts and interviews to piece together a comprehensive history of the life of Deng Xiaoping. The account is not strictly chronological. Vogel takes different periods of Deng's life and divides each period into a set of topics covered in separate chapters. This makes the explanation of the events driving each topic easier to follow but it means that the reader may lose track of contemporaneous events discussed in a previous chapter.
Unfortunately, Vogel's review of the life of Deng Xiaoping has not fully answered my questions but it is not for lack of trying. Vogel points out early in the book that Deng Xiaoping did not keep a diary or personal writings or confide his inner-most thoughts on government policy with those around him. His speeches were well-organized and thought-out but without written notes. Consequently, we have no window into his thoughts; we have only his actions and events surrounding him to judge his thinking and how it changed over his life. This lack of a personal written record no doubt was a key factor in his survival of the many leadership purges under Mao Tse-tung. Another factor was his complete loyalty to the Party and to Mao. Although Deng was removed from top leadership positions three times in his career, including a 3-year exile during the Cultural Revolution, he was never expelled out of the Party.
We also learn that Deng Xiaoping was, above all, a pragmatist and a patriot. His driving motivation was to do whatever necessary to foster China's economic development and re-emergence as a global leader. He was not an ideologue, although he was a skillful politician, sensitive to those who opposed his ideas and careful to find ways to test out policy reforms in isolated cases before moving toward full implementation.
Deng Xiaoping is easily one of the most important leaders of the 20th century. We are indeed fortunate to have Ezra Vogel's scholarly and literary talents applied to an English biography of Deng Xiaoping. There is much we can learn from Vogel's account but even more that is left for interpretation reading between the lines.
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Reviewed in the United States on May 25, 2014
★★★★★ 1
Not so much
Format: Hardcover
I can't judge the social science merits of this study. But it's treatment of premodern Chinese history is shoddy and ill informed of the existing literature.
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Reviewed in the United States on January 18, 2026
★★★★★ 5
Una abrebocas de como puede ser un mundo multipolar
Format: Hardcover
Un buen análisis de como puede impactar a los gobiernos, empresas y personas un mundo multipolar con zonas de influencia por poderes regionales.
La geopolítica cada vez está más vigente y si no la entendemos, no vamos a poder aprovechar las nuevas oportunidades de esta era.
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Reviewed in the United States on January 13, 2026
★★★★★ 5
The Future is Now
Format: Hardcover
The author makes a compelling argument that the world is fracturing into two principal trade blocs, the U.S.A bloc and the China bloc. Even cursory review of the daily business news confirms the author's argument is taking shape now. This is an important book for those interested in geopolitics, economics, and even those who are trying to determine where to invest their funds based on changing global dynamics.
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Reviewed in the United States on December 14, 2025
★★★★★ 5
Cute book and engaging story
Format: Paperback
My grand daughter reads at a 3rd grade reading level, so doesn't want to read the easy readers but loses interest easily with traditional chapter books. This little book was a perfect fit. She's an axolotl fan so the pictures and the story line kept her engaged. There's even a couple of pages of axolotl facts at the end of the book. Well worth adding to her book shelf!
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Reviewed in the United States on May 23, 2026
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