Critics Review

• A fascinating journey through Earth’s history… [Halliday] is appropriately lavish in his depiction of the variety and resilience of life, without compromising on scientific accuracy… 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

• Writing with gusto and bravado […] Halliday has honed a unique voice… 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… Along the way, we learn astounding facts

  Scientific American

• Halliday takes us on a journey into deep time in this epic book, showing us Earth as it used to be and the worlds that were here before ours

  Independent

• This is a piece of nature writing that covers millions of years, from the very start of evolution, while capturing the almost unthinkable ways geography has shifted and changed over time. Epic in scope and executed with charming enthusiasm, Otherlands looks set to be a big talking point for fans of non-fiction in 2022

  Mr Porter

• Palaeobiologist Thomas Halliday embraces a yet more epic timescale in Otherlands: A World in the Making, touring the many living worlds that preceded ours, from the mammoth steppe in glaciated Alaska to the lush rainforests of Eocene Antarctica. If you have ever wondered what sound a pterosaur’s wings made in flight, this is the book for you

  New Scientist

• The best book on the history of life on Earth I have ever read

  Tom Holland, author of DOMINION

• Thomas Halliday’s debut is a kaleidoscopic and evocative journey into deep time. He takes quiet fossil records and complex scientific research and brings them alive – riotous, full-coloured and three-dimensional. You’ll find yourself next to giant two-metre penguins in a forested Antarctica 41 million years ago or hearing singing icebergs in South Africa some 444 million years ago. Maybe most importantly, 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

• 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

• An absolutely gripping adventure story, exploring back through the changing vistas of our own planet’s past. 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. Otherlands is science writing at its very finest

  Lewis Dartnell, author of ORIGINS

• Full of wonder and fascination, exquisitely written, this is time travel of spectacular dimensions – a journey into our planet’s evolution and the world in which we live. A compellingly important read

  Isabella Tree, author of WILDING

• Otherlands is one of those rare books that’s 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 THE SIXTH EXTINCTION

• This stunning biography of our venerable Earth, detailing her many ages and moods, is an essential travel guide to the changing landscapes of our living world. As we hurtle into the Anthropocene, blindly at the helm of this inconstant planet, Halliday gives us our bearings within the panorama of deep time. Aeons buckle under his pen: the world before us made vivid; the paradox of our permanence and impermanence visceral. Wonderful

  Gaia Vince, author of TRANSCENDENCE