As a partner bookshop of Biomim'expo, Rue de l'Echiquier offers you a selection of books.

Some of the authors will be pleased to come and offer signing sessions on 19 October at the Cité des sciences.

Can an animal smile? Of course, or more precisely... it is because we ourselves are animals that we can do so! This role reversal is a sign of our relationship with the diversity of living things. We claim to dominate it. In reality we misunderstand it, we mistreat it and we put ourselves in danger.

The pangolin is the unfortunate symbol of this relationship with nature: poached by the hundreds of thousands for many years for its meat and scales, it only briefly concerns the media at the time of its hypothetical involvement in Covid-19. Closer to home, the pangolin's alter egos - foxes and badgers - are also being decimated, even though they play an important role in controlling several diseases.

Biodiversity is waiting for us to finally understand it for what it is: a powerful and immense source of life in perpetual evolution that guarantees the maintenance of life on Earth. By weakening it through our actions, we threaten our crops, our livestock and our health. Philippe Grandcolas calls for a better understanding of it in order to better respect it, at the dawn of a global extinction crisis.

>> Read more

Signing session at the Rue de l'Echiquier stand, in Salle Louis Armand, Level S3

The way we look at plants has changed since they were shown to be sensitive, capable of memorising, having an acute knowledge of their environment and recognising their relatives.

Although plants have no brain or muscles and are unable to move, they have survived for more than a billion years thanks to numerous properties that give them remarkable adaptive capacities.

These creatures have contributed to scientific progress in fields as diverse as industry, medicine, architecture, design, computing and robotics. By taking inspiration from plants, we can invent extraordinarily effective adhesives; fight certain pests such as bedbugs; protect ourselves from water... or store it; efficiently capture solar or wind energy; recycle CO2; fight bacteria without antibiotics; manufacture botanical surgical implants...

With a lively and alert pen, the authors take us on a discovery of the secrets of green gold and the latest innovations.

>> Read more

Signing session at the Rue de l'Echiquier stand, in Salle Louis Armand, Level S3

Biomimicry has enjoyed strong media and institutional recognition since the early 2010s. But how can this concept - which consists of drawing inspiration from nature to eco-design products, processes or systems, while respecting the limits of the planet - help us to deal with this crisis in our relationship with living beings, of which Covid-19 is only a symptom? According to Emmanuel Delannoy, there is no crisis of life: there is only a crisis of our relationship with life. The pandemic thus reveals the difficulty of integrating our social, economic and political organisations into the planetary web of life - which we call 'biodiversity' without always understanding that we are one of its components.

After a first part devoted to the study of the limits and potential pitfalls of our current conception of ecological transition, the author describes the conditions, values and principles of action of an ethical approach to biomimicry, which would contribute to the emergence of a new relationship with living beings, or even a new collective imaginary - the "narrative" that societies need to cement themselves and civilisations to evolve.

>> Read more

Signing session at the Rue de l'Echiquier stand, in Salle Louis Armand, Level S3

Environment, climate, society: facing the emergency, a committed manifesto, concrete paths and current and inspiring examples to redefine a policy of positive global contribution of companies to society.

L'Entreprise contributive aims to be a revelation of evidence for action. It aims to be the first book to provide the keys to reinventing the company so that it contributes to the materiality of the "next world".

>> Read more

Signing session at the Rue de l'Echiquier stand, in Salle Louis Armand, Level S3

after their intervention in the Louis Armand plenary at 11:00

Faced with the complexity of the issues of our time, how can bio-inspiration improve our lives and our organisations?

For millions of years, animals and plants have built veritable laboratories of behavioural innovations: whale calves have mentors, plants communicate with each other, octopuses practice agility, corals let go, primates barter, and fish make alliances...

Through numerous stories, Emmanuelle Joseph-Dailly proposes in this book to explore the virtuous models of Nature, which can guide us in rethinking our habits and our relationship with time, emotions and learning.

A refreshing and innovative essay, with feedback from leaders and experts who draw on the mechanisms of life to sustainably transform their organisations.

>> Read more

Signing session at the Rue de l'Echiquier stand, in Salle Louis Armand, Level S3

after his speech in the Louis Armand plenary at 10.30 am

The world around us is changing; what we once labelled without a shadow of a doubt is becoming mixed, other, new. Day after day, our most trivial devices bear witness to this: a telephone is no longer just a telephone, it is also a camera, a television, an alarm clock. For Gabrielle Halpern, this is part of a more general transformation: cultures, cities, companies, identities, modes of work and consumption, politics, strategies, genders, and human beings are now under the sign of the composite, the contradictory. In a word, everything is hybrid. 

>> Read more

Signing session at the Rue de l'Echiquier stand, in Salle Louis Armand, Level S3

The environmentalist organisation Gaia will do anything to save the planet and humanity. Its members are multiplying their spectacular operations and worrying the American government.

In the merciless struggle between the United States and China for a new Eldorado, Washington uses Abel, the charismatic leader of Gaia, as a scapegoat.
He becomes public enemy number one and has no choice but to discover the truth. A truth that could tip the world into apocalypse... Or on the contrary, lead it to a more harmonious future.
Conspiracies, shamanism, the conquest of the Moon, secret codes, but also hope and utopia... From Arizona to the atoll of Diego Garcia, from Mount Fuji to the Gulf of Tonkin, the Blue Century is a resolutely visionary ecological thriller, but above all a great adventure novel!

Siècle bleu, the first volume of a saga that questions our times.

>> Read more

Signing session at the Rue de l'Echiquier stand, in Salle Louis Armand, Level S3

after his intervention in the plenary at 12 noon

Cand book This carefully and accurately illustrated book lists the main non-human animals in our cities. Among these 100 specimens, some are familiar to us (blackbirds, squirrels, wasps), others are more mysterious, such as parakeets, elegant agrions or common pipistrelles. And yet, almost all of them live around us!
This book is an invitation to get to know them simply, to see them differently, to sharpen our eyes and to move towards ever greater respect and attention for these unique and living little helpers!

>> Read more

Signing session at the Rue de l'Echiquier stand, in Salle Louis Armand, Level S3

In the course of its long existence, our planet has undergone several major crises, each of which has profoundly transformed life and led to the extinction of the majority of species. However, the image of a dinosaur watching a meteorite crash into the earth and causing its sudden extinction is a myth. Biodiversity crises move forward silently, in a veil of secrecy. Man and his ever-increasing consumption of space and energy are the primary cause. If nothing is done, this new major biodiversity crisis will occur, and humanity, whose survival and prosperity depend on the balance of ecosystems, could also disappear.

>> Read more

Signing session at the Rue de l'Echiquier stand, in Salle Louis Armand, Level S3

after his intervention in the plenary at 2pm

Faster, further, drawing ever more on the resources of a nature that is running out of steam: our model is showing its limits. How can it be rebuilt? By becoming fascinated by the sublime butterfly Morpho that the author has seen the way forward.

Multifunctionality, disorder and economy in elements: the main principles exploited by living organisms are far removed from our way of innovating today... Take the lagoon blue wings of the Morpho They stiffen or bend to optimise flight, but are also self-cleaning, antibacterial and regulate the animal's temperature as soon as it wakes up. As for their marvellous colour, obtained without pigment or rare earths doomed to exhaustion, it enables them to communicate and avoid predators!

During an expedition to the Amazon on the trail of the mythical butterfly, Serge Berthier details the solutions adopted by this engineering jewel. What if we were to take inspiration from it to repair the planet and imagine a better world?

>> Read more

Signing session at the Rue de l'Echiquier stand, in Salle Louis Armand, Level S3