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Togetherness
  • Published: 4 July 2026
  • ISBN: 9781911717140
  • Imprint: Fern Press
  • Format: Hardback
  • Pages: 416
  • RRP: $75.00

Togetherness

Symbiosis and the Hidden Story of Life’s Greatest Collaborations

Formats & editions
Tr. Paperback
2 June 2026
Hardback
4 July 2026
EBook
4 June 2026
Audiobook
4 June 2026
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An awe-inspiring exploration of how symbiosis can change the way we understand our world, ourselves and our future

From evolution to capitalism, ‘survival of the fittest’ has shaped our view of the world. But we got it wrong – and our mistake has brought us to the brink.

For the history of life on Earth is much more than a story of competition. The natural world has been forged and sustained by small miracles of co-operation between animals and plants, insects and fungi, fish and bacteria – these partnerships are ubiquitous, lifelong and are an essential guide for a better future.

In Togetherness, Rowan Hooper reveals the intimate connectedness of nature through these remarkable stories of symbiosis. From the female wasp venturing deep inside a fig and the intricate relationship between corals and the algae that sustain them to the symbiotic gut microbes that influence our moods, he explores how co-operation is fundamental to life itself and to protecting our shared future.

Togetherness will change the way you see the world, our place in it – and our obligation to its hidden wonders.
  • Published: 4 July 2026
  • ISBN: 9781911717140
  • Imprint: Fern Press
  • Format: Hardback
  • Pages: 416
  • RRP: $75.00
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About the author

Rowan Hooper

DR ROWAN HOOPER is a biologist and an award-winning journalist, writer and broadcaster. A senior editor at New Scientist magazine, he is the creator and host of New Scientist’s hit weekly podcast, The World, the Universe and Us. After gaining a PhD in evolutionary biology from the University of Sheffield, he moved to Japan and worked as a field biologist. He is the author of Superhuman: Life at the Extremes of Mental and Physical Ability, which was a Sunday Times Book of the Year, and How to Spend a Trillion Dollars. His articles have been published in New Scientist and the Japan Times as well as the Guardian, the Washington Post, the Wall Street Journal, Wired, the Financial Times and the Economist. He lives in London with his partner and their two daughters.
RH

Praise for Togetherness

I think this may be one of those rare books that's a classic upon its publication. It calmly and comprehensively helps you see the world in a very new and hopeful way, and I think the insights apply to our social and political life. We were, all of us, built for contact

Bill McKibben

Absolutely enthralling. I was hooked from the first sentence

Bill Bryson

An awe-inspiring journey . . . An exposé of our unbreakable connections with all life on Earth

Alex Antonelli

A clarion call for cooperation at a time when competition, chaos and cruelty seem to rule the day . . . This is a joyful book, of hope and wonder, which celebrates community as the true key to success in nature

Steve Brusatte

Togetherness is the most important book I’ve read for years. Richly layered, thrilling, intellectually wide-ranging and so fascinating with evocative imagery and warm prose which brings the science and the world to vivid life and offers a crucial and urgent intervention on our mistaken and inadequate understanding of life and its entangled, enmeshed, webby, netty, symbiotic togetherness . . . Utterly stunning and awe-inspiring. Everyone needs to read this book, now!

Lucy Jones