The Many Lives of James Lovelock

This splendid, balanced biography testifies to the pros and cons of scientific mavericks * * Guardian * *A scientific life as dissonant as it was remarkable. Watts [ … ] nimbly parses the brilliance and flaws of a man whose interdisciplinary interests spanned vast areas of twentieth-century research * * Financial Times * *Utterly fascinating - a beautifully braided account of the life of a maverick, prophetic genius. Jonathan Watts has turned Lovelock’s greatest idea into literary form, giving us a Gaian biography in which Lovelock’s discoveries are understood as always occurring in relation - to people, to places and to the Earth itself – ROBERT MACFARLANEIn this comprehensive biography, Jonathan Watts presents a well-researched chronicle of a complicated life, marked by professional success, controversy and some personal failings. Watts tells Lovelock’s story with admiration and compassion, but also with an honesty that embeds both success and failure in the complexities of being gifted, and human * * Times Literary Supplement * *In his tender and searching new biography of Lovelock, based on eighty hours of interviews with his subject, Jonathan Watts, global environment editor at the Guardian, embraces this multiplicity. [ … ] If you want a rounded sense of the man, this book provides one beautifully * * Economist * *

Jonathan Watts is a journalist based in the Amazon rainforest in Brazil. He is global environment editor at the Guardian and founder of the Rainforest Journalism Fund. He has won numerous environmental and science journalism awards and is the author of When a Billion Chinese Jump: How China Will Save the World - or Destroy It.