| View Larger Image | Amazing Rare Things: The Art of Natural History in the Age of Discovery | Paperbackby David Attenborough (Author), Susan Owens (Author)
| List Price: | $24.95 | | Price: | $16.47 | | You Save: | $8.48 (34%) | | | Available: | Usually ships in 24 hours |
| | Binding: | Paperback | | Publisher: | Kales Press | | Page Count: | 224 Pages | | Publication Date: | September 29, 2009 | | Sales Rank: | 61,491st |
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FEATURES | - ISBN13: 9780979845628
- Condition: NEW
- Notes: Brand New from Publisher. No Remainder Mark.
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EDITORIAL REVIEWS |
Product Description
Amazing Rare Things is enthralling, with elegant natural history drawings from the British Royal Collection married to beautiful prose. The Royal Collection, held at Windsor Castle, Buckingham Palace, and Holyroodhouse, Edinburgh, has been shaped by the personal tastes of kings and queens for more than five hundred years. The Collection’s exquisite natural history artworks in Amazing Rare Things is supplemented by an introduction and commentary from Sir David Attenborough. This exploration of the natural world from the late fifteenth century to the early eighteenth century represents a period when European knowledge of the world was transformed by voyages of discovery to the farthest reaches of Africa, Asia, America, and beyond. Included are works by Leonardo da Vinci and other foremost artists and collectors of their time who embraced the natural riches of their ever-expanding world and whose legacies help us better understand today our continuing relationship with the natural world. . |
CUSTOMER REVIEWS (Average Customer Rating: 4.5 based on 10 reviews)
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Beautiful book to read and just to look at the illustrations by AgnesB  5 Stars
April 08, 2009
Beautiful and interesting for lovers of nature, history of world discovery, history of botany and beautiful illustrations. I would love to see it expand into subcategories, like birds, plants etc., not only documenting a few illustrators. But maybe it will be done in the future. This is one coffee table book that will be read and re-read.
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Beautiful geekery by A. Rehm (Boston) 5 Stars
February 23, 2009
David Attenborough technically retired after "Life in Cold Blood" capped his "Life" series, which has now covered every living thing in the world. Now he does whatever he wants, which generally means geeking out over one obscure thing after another; he recently completed a one-hour special about amber, just because he thinks amber is cool. And now there's this, which is basically him waxing geektastic about famous nature illustrators.
Flip through it and find a Da Vinci drawing of a dissected bear's foot on one page, with Attenborough babbling about how kickass that is on the next. If you don't think that sounds awesome, this is not the book for you. Neither am I the friend for you.
It's not all Attenborough - he just wrote the wonderful introduction and contributed extensive comments on many of the plates. Other folks wrote each of the four essays on important figures in natural illustration's history. And I saw a typo in the Da Vinci one, which pissed me off. I hate typos. But this book still totally rules my face.
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A "Cabinet" of Curiosities by Giordano Bruno (Wherever I am, I am.)  4 Stars
January 07, 2009
You'd better read the title of this book carefully before you order it sight unseen. The key word is ART, not 'natural history' or 'age of discovery'. The book is in fact a series of essays about five pioneering scientific illustrators: Leonardo da Vinci, Cassiano dal Pozzo, Alexander Marshal, Maria Sibylla Merian, and Mark Catesby. I certainly don't wish to scoff at the importance of scientific illustration, or to deny that there is no true line between such illustration and fine art. I only wish the book in hand included a good deal more of the illustrations and less of the sometimes rhapsodic texts. As it happens, this is effectively a 'coffee table' book, large format, high quality paper, excellent color printing -- just the kind of book you'd give as a holiday present to an ungrateful lout like me.
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Beautiful Environmental Art History Book by Sci Fi Lover (Weymouth, MA) 5 Stars
May 11, 2008
I was really impressed with the color illustrations of the artists. I was surprised to see that Leonardo Davinci's art was the worst of any artist in the book. I had heard that David Attenborough had not made enough comments in the book according to one Amazon reviewer, but I found that that was not the case. He certainly is the main author of this book.
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Inspiring book by L. Hinchman (Petoskey, MI) 5 Stars
April 25, 2008
I think this book is beautiful. It's exactly what I expected. I'm a biology nut and I love old botanicals. These are very unique pieces and I really enjoy them. My 5 yr. old thinks this book is amazing! She asks tons of questions about all of the drawings and is learning a lot about biology in the process.
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