Dartington Trust Books

21/12/2024

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24/08/2024

21/08/2024

Living on Earth is the eagerly awaited third part in professor, philosopher and avid scuba-diver Peter Godfrey-Smith’s exploration into sentience and life on this planet.

Following Other Minds and Metazoa, in this final part, Godfrey-Smith travels the world exploring how life has shaped and been shaped by the planet itself. Our own species’ dramatic impacts on Earth are of course at the centre of this work.

Godfrey-Smith takes us first to Australia to witness cyanobacteria who, some 3 billion years ago, invented a new type of photosynthesis which flooded our world with oxygen, paving the way for animal life. As he travels the landscape of Australia he takes us on a time-travelling tour of the beginnings of this life, giving a sense of scale to the brevity of humanities involvement in the history of Earth.

This book leads us on a tour of life on Earth at this moment too - bowerbirds, gorillas and, of course, coral reefs. Godfrey-Smith offers not just warnings about climate breakdown and the fragility of the life he witnesses, but also his ideas on practical solutions which could help us all. He reminds us of the importance of local action in the form of habitat preservation; a note I found empowering in the midst of an issue which often feels hopelessly huge and overwhelming.

19/08/2024

El-Ghourabaa: A Collection of Q***r and Trans Oddities came from the invitation of editors Eli Tareq El Bechelany-Lynch and Samia Marshy for q***r and trans authors of the Arab and Arab speaking community to come together and play. The anthology is borne specifically of the Canadian Arab community and is described in the foreword as a literary gift.

It is a mixed-genre anthology (poetry, short stories, extracts), a defiance against easy categories and market practices of stereotyping, presenting instead a nuanced understanding of Arab identity. It is sexy, poignant, funny.

The authors tell us in their introduction that the last few months of working on the anthology had the most tragic backdrop: the genocidal campaign against Gaza. The fun of their initial inspiration became something deeply serious.

“Our existence is resistence,” they tell us.



***ranthology

13/08/2024

In High Society, Mike Jay explores how the use of mind-altering substances has been a near ubiquitous experience of human culture.

From the use of the poppy in the ancient world to contemporary betel-chewing across Asian and Oceanic cultures, to (so-called) Aztec priests use of the to***co plant, this book is vast in its scope.

In Ten Trips, clinical neuropsychologist Andy Mitchell explores and tests the claims being made for psychedelics by taking ten different ones in ten different settings.

It is a deeply personal account without romanticism; power and its misuse in the field of psychedelics is not shied away from.