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In a world beset by climatic emergencies, the continuing resonance of the flood story is perhaps easy to understand. Whether in the tortured alpha male intensity of Russell Crowe's Noah, in Darren Aronofsky's eponymous 2014 film, or other recent derivations, the biblical narrative has become a lightning rod for gathering environmental anxieties. However, Philip C. Almond's masterful exploration of Western cultural history uncovers a far more complex Noah than is commonly recognised: not just the father of humanity but also the first shipbuilder, navigator, zookeeper, farmer, grape grower, and wine maker. Noah's pivotal significance is revealed as much in his forgotten secular as in his religious receptions, and their major impact on such disciplines as geology, geography, biology, and zoology. While Noah's many interpretations over two millennia might seem to offer a common message of hope, the author's sober conclusion is that deliverance now lies not in divine but rather in human hands.

• The story of Noah is one of the best-known of all the biblical stories, and this book – the first complete exploration in English of all its rich receptions – brings to it a new depth and colour
• Philip Almond is an internationally fêted cultural and intellectual historian whose bestselling academic books have been widely reviewed and translated into several languages
• The topic – environmental disaster – has considerable contemporary relevance and appeal
• Brim-full of fascinating and little-known details about the flood story, from the Gnostics and Islamic readings of Noah to the New Science and recent attempts to find the lost ark