Our Story The Remarkable Tale of an Extraordinary Species

About this book

It's easy to question our significance... What is our place in all of this? What is our purpose? What is our story? Our Story is both an awe-inspiring celebration of the natural world and a journey through the extraordinary story of our own species, and ties in with the TV documentary of the same name.

There are billions of planets in the universe. The vast majority are lifeless worlds. Once upon a time, Earth was just another among them – unstable, hostile. But unlike all the other planets of which we have knowledge, Earth's story has other chapters, and those chapters were written by life... For millennia, the human story was just another amongst many plotlines in the great narrative of life on Earth. We were the cleverest species to have ever lived, yet the restlessness of the world around us kept our numbers small. Until something remarkable happened.

With stunning imagery and poetic script, Our Story immerses readers in the most important story of them all and provides a totally new way of looking at our species at just the moment it is urgently needed.

As Sir David Attenborough says in the show: 'It's tempting to focus on the faults of humankind, to think of ourselves as a parasite on this beautiful planet. But after a long life exploring our world, that is not the way I see our story. Instead, I see us as the ultimate problem solvers; smart enough to achieve anything we put our dazzling minds to. That, indeed, is our superpower. So let us use it for good!' For in the vastness of space, the unimaginable extents of time, only you can help write the next chapter of Earth's story.

Customer Reviews

Biography

Colin Butfield is the co-founder and Director of Open Planet Studios. He has worked on numerous documentaries and short films, including the BBC series Earthshot, Netflix features A Life on Our Planet and Breaking Boundaries, and the National Geographic feature documentary Ocean, also with David Attenborough. He is the co-author of Earthshot: How to Save Our Planet.

Jonnie Hughes is an award-winning natural history TV producer, co-founder of Studio Silverback, and bestselling author and co-writer of Sir David Attenborough's A Life on Our Planet.