Jackie Higgins

Spellbinding . . . More than any other book, Sentient has made me think differently about the world this year. - Financial Times Best Books of the Year Lyrical and lucid . . . Higgins makes popular science accessible. - Observer The peacock mantis shrimp can throw a punch that can fracture aquarium walls. The great grey owl can hear...

Why take a self-portrait but obscure your face with a lightbulb (Lee Friedlander, Provincetown, Cape Cod, Massachusetts, 1968)? Or deliberately underexpose an image (Vera Lutter, Battersea Power Station, XI: July 13, 2004)? And why photograph a ceiling (William Eggleston, Untitled (Greenwood, Mississippi, 1973)? In Why It Does Not Have To Be In Focus, Jackie Higgins offers a lively, informed defence...