LIFE Wonders of Life: A Fantastic Voyage Through Nature - Hardcover

Editors Of Life

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1603201416 ISBN 13: 9781603201414

Publisher: Life, 2010

Synopsis

Here we have an endless stream of exotica-exotic living things growing from the ground and exotic critters of all shapes and sizes, crawling, bounding and flying around. As LIFE's editors put it in their introduction: "This is a wild book. In its pages we have animals as big as trucks and plants as big as small towns. We have flowers that dance for our pleasure and flowers that shyly hide underground, flowers that can kill animals and flowers that can heal animals. We have a teeny tiny bird that is directly descended from T Rex and a truly enormous bird that can't fly but can run 45 miles an hour. We have a lizard king that could rip you apart and a lizard princeling that walks on water. This is a wild, wild book."

It is indeed. It is a book that is focused on life at the far fringes-the biggest, toughest, gentlest, rarest and weirdest species. It ultimately creates an astonishing image of the world around us, a world more diverse and sometimes strange than even the most imaginative reader might have expected. Accompanying the remarkable photography, which is always LIFE's hallmark, are descriptions of each subject that will fairly boggle the mind. Did you know that a carnivorous plant's trapping mechanism often doubles as its stomach, or that an elephant seal can hold its breath for up to two hours when diving in the sea? There are as many amazing facts in these pages as there are sensational pictures.

And as with earlier volumes in LIFE's Classic Collection series, Wonders of Life comes with a bonus feature: Five photographic prints from the famed LIFE archive that can be extracted, framed and hung on your wall. When the print is removed, the exact picture is still there on the page beneath, so your deluxe coffee-table book remains intact. It is, as the editors write, "an elegant trick worthy of the dancing flower, and one that our readers have come to expect-and greatly enjoy." Travel along then, around the globe and to the depths of the oceans, as LIFE celebrates the wonders of life-each of them wondrous almost beyond belief.

About this title

About the Author:

The editors at LIFE vigorously carry on the traditions of excellence in photography, in journalism, and in telling the story of our country and our world which began with LIFE magazine in 1936 by founding editor and publisher, Henry R. Luce. They have published books on a broad range of subjects, including New York Times bestsellers One Nation, LIFE Picture Puzzle and The American Journey of Barack Obama.

From Publishers Weekly:

The editors of LIFE Magazine deliver another typically handsome coffee table compilation, a "wild book" in their opinion, of 100 photographs focusing on all shapes and sizes our living world. Divided into two sections—Flora and Fauna—the book examines plant life and vegetation in some of the most unexplored corners of the world (as well as many spots readers would expect), and takes a close—often very close—look at mammals and insects. Readers will explore California's seemingly endless poppy fields and the wonderfully vibrant seagrass that grows near Mexico's Guadalupe Island, for instance, and find breathtaking beauty in underwater images of larger-than-life coral reefs remarkably various in color and shape, and the snakes, seahorses, sponges, and fish that inhabit them. The editors coyly bury the lead by saving "one animal—the human kind" for last, using a famous shot of a six-month old fetus from their 1965 cover story, "Drama of Life Before Birth," to wrap things up. Including five removable photos by such notable photojournalists as Alfred Eisenstaedt, LIFE's third "Classic Collection" volume is striking and accessible enough to interest all ages. Photos. (Oct. 19)
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About this edition

• Publisher: Life
• Publication date: 2010
• ISBN 10: 1603201416
• ISBN 13: 9781603201414
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 144