Endangered Species Books

We received this book in the described condition although the shipping was a bit slow. Overall, not bad. Thanks.

i got the item quickly, it was in wonderful condition and it was a good book

I am a mature adult who read this book on a chance and discovered it to be quite entertaining and enlightening at the same time. I can see why many children would enjoyed reading this book. The approach proves to be fair, balance and while it take a pro-environmental perception toward the end, it teaches that there are two sides to a debate.

The book also take pains to developed the characters and the gradual evolution of the main character's father, a lumberjack laid off from work dues to endangered owls proves to be most reflective. The father's gradual understanding of issues of both sides guide the readers as well.

The book also educated about owls. Why they cast out pellets or what hunger streak in feathers can do. These information come gradually and unrushed for easy absorption of information for children.

The writing proves to be light and easy to read, story was interesting and while it was geared toward elementary school children and they should love this book, I enjoyed it myself as well. Thus, the book come highly recommended and while it end in rather a somber note (no happy ending here), its an intelligently written book, suitable for all.

I bought this book for my younger sister for christmas who loves animals.I looked at the cover and the picture of the owl was adorible!
But later when my sister read the book, she said that Borden's father kept saying that he was going to kill the bird.
Well at the end of the book he doesn't kill the bird but just before the end it is really sad what happens to Bardy.
To find out what happens, just read the end of the book.

This book is awesome!I read the first chapter in the book store and I just had to take it home with me!If I could I would rate it 10 stars.

Along with many nature lovers who are intrigued by rare and unusual species of wildlife, I was caught up in the ivorybill rediscovery craze of 2004. So this book, and others like it, added plenty of fuel to the fires of my curiosity and wonder at the idea of being able to actually see this bird. The author himself clearly shares this deep passion and, along with various people he has worked with and interviewed, feels certain that he has seen it. But if they are really out there, one has to wonder how it is possible that no one has yet managed to take a picture of one that would constitute irrefutable proof of the bird's existence. Does someone know something we don't, or were all these people just caught up in a wave of wishful thinking that ended up being a delusion?

All of us would dearly love to believe that this spectacular denizen of our southern swamps has not really vanished forever, but maybe we have to accept the fact that we made some mistakes by not preserving its habitat, and learn a few lessons from this when it comes to saving other imperiled species. Nevertheless, I could not be happier if somehow, this particular species actually did manage to beat the odds and survive, but I guess only time will tell...

I read this book back in November of 2006 and was fascinated from the first page. What could be more exciting than to be hot on the trail of something that the experts say no longer exists, armed with information that says it still does.

I'm reminded of the book "The Lost Grizzlies" by Rick Bass about the search to discover grizzly bears living in southern Colorado where they have been supposedly non-existent for years. A tuft of hair, a pile of scat but no pictures and no video.

I find the possibility of finding the Ivory Bill even more exciting than the search itself. Here's to the dreamers and hopefuls who keep the hunt alive. Whether searching for Ivory Bills in Arkansas, grizzlies in Colorado or bigfoot in the Bitteroot I applaud those undeterred spirits who fuel the fire of the search and help fill our shelves with stories of adventure and hope.

This is such an enjoyable book. Gallagher paints the picture of all the players, even way back over time, that were involved in the Ivory-bill's research. More should know of these backgrounds and personalities. What has surprised me is how many prominent naturalists of considerable renown have seen the bird over this century, and then kept quiet about it. This is like saying you personally have seen an UFO and don't want to be scorned by your peers, and considered an outright nut. That revelation is what causes me to think this reclusive bird might just have survived in some numbers in these swamplands. Plus the swamp crackers remarking about the coloration and striking white patterns of the birds, and having their own colloquial descriptions of their experiences. They seem to know pileateds quite well and sense the contrast with any Ivory-bill they ever encountered. This is what makes this book exciting reading, and such a keeper. Anyone will get involved in this pursuit and Gallagher does a great job weaving the tale. Non-birders will be surprised that this genus extends down into South America, and a member or two can be observed there of this larger woodpeckers clan. This book is an education!

I just learned of the rediscovery of the ivory billed woodpecker from reading some back issues of WILDBIRD magazine. I immediately ordered this book and read it in two days....WOW what an exciting, riveting, fascinating, fun book this is...I love woodpeckers so I really hope this can be proven with a picture even though I am sure it exists already. On the website it says there are still no pictures to prove it and people are still searching. I hope they find it soon-What an amazing story!!!!

This book is poignant and RIVETING. The protagonist is as "muck"rakingly mortal as a Ross Macdonald sleuth and the Delta-country bit parts have the idiosyncrasies of Dashiell Hammett collaborating suspects. The woodpecker himself, whether guilty of existing of not, is as elusive and infuriatingly (intentionally?) mysterious as a John le Carre double agent. And the stakes, a second chance for all of us, to find and preserve the "Lord God bird" are so heartbreakingly high as to be virtually Biblical.

Another great book in the series. This one has a great message about protecting the animals children grow to love while reading Erin Carle.

I love the illustrations in this book of all the endangered animals--they are gorgeous and make reading it to my son a real pleasure. I even learned about a new animal via this book, the macaroni penguin, which I had to look up the first time I read it. I think this is a great addition to a child's library.

Review by Sherry North, Author, Because You Are My Baby

This book follows the same pattern as the classic Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do You See? but with an exciting new spin -- exotic, endangered animals. It also has a delightful surprise ending that makes it perfect for a bedtime story.

My 2-year old twins like this book because they like to see the animals, but I think they'd get more out of it if more mainstream animals were used. I think they're a little thrown by animals like "macaroni penguin" - sounds like food to them. The dreaming child part is weird looking too.

I think it's great to use endangered animals, although my kids aren't exactly as concerned about animal endangerment as I am. It's not a bad book or anything, but honestly, if I had read it in a bookstore, I wouldn't have bought it.

"Panda Bear, Panda Bear, What Do You See?" is a very simple book, with repetitive text that makes it easy for youngsters to read. Not being familiar with the other titles by author Bill Martin or illustrator Eric Carle, I can't compare it to any of the other titles by this duo. What I can say is that the animals chosen for this particular book are endangered. From the Macaroni penguin to the red wolf, these creatures will captivate young minds.

Although the repetitious lines may bore parents when reading this book to their kids, the illustrations will keep their attention. Carle has made some wonderful creations on the pages of this book and they are what really make this book worth buying.

The endangered species message may be a bit over the little minds that will be reading or listening to this tale, but there's nothing wrong with giving kids this sort of knowledge at an early age. This book, primarily due to the pictures, is an excellent early stages book for children in kindergarten through second grade.

This book reads like an obituary, providing us one last chance to marvel at the animals that top the food chain before they disappear forever. It is engaging and colorful, but ultimately very sad; Quammen certainly does not seem optimistic that any of the great predators can be saved. It is even questionable that they should be, for how can we compare the intangible value of the existence of predators with the lives of those people that they will occasionally kill? Shouldn't we be glad that we are no longer prey? Or are we losing something that makes us human when we lose these species? With sections about many predators, including lions, crocodiles, and bears (oh my) Quammen outlines the history of human interaction with these animals and the current sad state of affairs. The book is beautifully written, easy to read, and very personal. I enjoyed it, but was left depressed at the human impact on this planet. Thank goodness Quammen has recorded these stories before they cease to exist.

I am still in the process of reading this book, I am towards the last part where Quammen returns to the Gir forrest, in India. I have so far enjoyed it greatly. The book does have a meandering plot, but in this book I like that. The author changes with ease from one subject to another. Qammen makes it clear, not by his opinions but by facts and numbers that the ever growing human population will likley bring an end to the unique relationship between man and the wild alpha predators. Animals which are not only needed for a healthy ecosystem, but Quammen suggests, a healthy human outlook on nature, and hummanity's place in it. I highly recommend this book to anyone who has a real love of nature and the animals that are part of it. It points out that if we are to control the destruction of our beloved wildlands, first we have to control ourselves.

By the time I completed David Quammen's "Monster of God" I had to wonder "who's the predator here"? Of course given half a chance it would be the four animals (Asiatic Lions, European Brown Bears, Saltwater Crocodiles and Siberian Tigers) he covers in his thoughtfully written book but as he points out, along with other naturalists and conservationists, they are not being given half a chance. For me this was a very sobering read and I had to put it down for a couple of weeks before I could bear to finish the last ten pages. There are glimmers of hope sprinkled throughout the book with Mr.Quammen masterfully guiding us through these fragile wild places where these "monsters" are intended to be stalking (us!). The section on the Asiatic lions and the Maldhari people in India, caught in a push-pull situation, was very moving while the Brown Bear section set in the Carpathian Mountains of Romania was chilling. The passages about Ceausescu's "shooting expeditions" are blazed into my memory almost as a metaphor of what man is doing to the whole bloody planet. It isn't the easiest reading style but I felt in very capable hands with Mr. Quammen showing us once more that time is, in fact, running out for these magnificent animals and for us.

While Quammen himself has remarked on the natural world's "great capacity for vulgar entertainment," he is reluctant to travel far down that path in Monster of God. Indeed, if you came looking for gory details of terrifying animal attacks, you'd better be prepared to find them hidden amidst long stretches of historical and political information. You will learn far more about nomad buffalo herders in India, the plight of the aborigines in Australia, and the hunting trips of Nicolae Ceaucescu in Romania, than you will about any particular predator species. Quammen is careful to provide context--possibly too much context. He has a point to make about social class and resource management, a theory he gives the unlikely name of "the Muskrat Conundrum," and he feels there's a lot of historical and economic ground to cover, before we can understand what man-eaters have to do with the social class of the people they eat.

His goal is for us to sympathize both with the predators, teetering on the edge of extinction, and the people whose lives dictate that they live among and fear these predators. A former novelist and literature scholar, Quammen presents the human side of the story with astute characterizations of varied personalities. His approach is the intimacy of immersion journalism. Though disguised as a sensationalist page-turner about animals that kill people, Monster is, at its heart, a conservationist's tale.

A problem that generally plagues the literature of conservation is the unrelenting dreariness and pessimism that can galvanize the thick-skinned reader but leaves all others inert and despondent. In contrast, David Quammen's dire predictions, put into a rich context of history, society, environment and gripping dramatic prose, place Monster of God into another category: not quite a guilty pleasure animal attack book, and not the bitter pill medicine of standard environmental writing. Instead he's presented a combination of both forms, a scholarly yet entertaining monster book with a conservationist's conscience.

Great read...Quammen interweaves history, culture, science, folklore, and exotic locations to describe four alpha predators: the Asiatic Lion, the Australian Crocodile, the Romanian Bear, and the Siberian Tiger.

Quammen is an accomplished naturalist and master of literary prose whose expansive topics and mastery of prose will delight some and madden others. Topics in the book range from the epic poem Beowulf, to the discovery of the Chauvet Caves in France, to H.R Giger's creature used in the Alien movies.

This is not a "Maneaters" or "How to Survive a Bear Attack" type book. If you expect that type of read, you'll be sorely disappointed. Also, whether by accident or design, Quammen focuses on alpha predators that to a limited extent, coexist with humans within that culture. (Quammen even states that similar interactions with the bears in Yellowstone Park or the lions in Africa, as opposed to the bears and lions in Romania and India respectively, he describes in the book, would probably result in certain death.)

Quammen neither demonizes nor coddles these creatures, but instead clearly establishes their proper role in the environment and what effect man's exploding population will have on them in the next 100 years. Intelligent, thoughtful, and provocative writing.

If you can discipline yourself to read through the entire book, you just might find it enlightening.

I picked this book up based on recommendations from online reader groups who said it would read more like fiction than non-fiction. They were right! Hoose has meticulously researched the plight of the "Lord God Bird", the ivory-billed woodpecker, documenting the efforts to locate the dwindling population and the sad effects of man vs. nature. Well highlighted by photographs, we follow the loss of this magnificent creature as its habitat is swallowed up by man's greed in the first half of the twentieth century. Hoose's writing is vivid and engrossing and caused me to do that rarest of things---go online and research more for myself. Most interesting of all is that just after this book was published, there have been reports of the rediscovery of the ivory-bill! This is a wonderful book appropriate for people of all ages and especially those who are worried about the endangerment of species by mankind's shortsightedness. Recommended!

I thought that this book was well written, and thoroughly researched, but I didn't enjoy it very much. It was a very sad book. The author did a great job writing the story's fact for fact, but there were some parts where you say "awwww" and feel bad for these birds. In one story he wrote, a man went on a hunting trip to find a "Lord God Bird" and killed a family of them, including two babies. The hunter also killed many more birds that trip. I would not recommend this book unless you enjoy sad stories. It is one of those books that draws you into certain stories, but in between them you really want to put the book down.

"The Race to Save the Lord God Bird" is a chronicle of the history and demise of the ivory-billed woodpecker. It was written for children ages 9-12 but is perfectly suitable for adults as well. The book is large format in size, which makes the font bigger, but there is just as much text on each page as in an adult book, and there is nothing conspicuously juvenile about it. The large dimensions allow for nice black-and-white photographs of ivory-bills, their habitat, and the people who studied the birds.

Author Phillip Hoose follows human interest in the ivory-bill woodpecker from Alexander Wilson's encounter with the bird in 1809 as he was working on his 9-volume "American Ornithology" to John James Audubon's work sketching the bird in natural poses around 1820. By 1900, large scale deforestation in Southern states had made the ivory-bill rare. At this point, "The Race to Save the Lord God Bird" turns its attention to the collectors who were continuing to mine the population when they clearly shouldn't have been and the beginnings of organized conservation efforts, starting with the "Plume Wars" that sought to end the slaughter of birds to decorate ladies' hats. It describes the 1935 Cornell University expedition by Jim Tanner, George Sutton, Arthur "Doc" Allen, and Paul Kellogg to record bird calls of nearly 100 species in the Tensas Swamp in Louisiana. That's followed up by an account of Jim Tanner's 3 years studying the few remaining ivory-bills for the Audubon Society, 1937-1939, from which he wrote his still-famous book.

As Tanner was creeping around in it, the Singer Manufacturing Company sold logging rights to the Singer Tract, where the last known ivory-bills lived, and efforts to preserve the forest by purchasing it failed. The ivory-billed woodpecker was declared extinct. A couple chapters are dedicated to recent searches for the ivory-bill in Cuba and the United States, but this book was published before the announcement in April 2005 that the ivory-bill may still live. In the back of the book, there are maps of the shrinking ivory-bill habitat 1800-present, a chronology of important dates in ivory-bill and bird conservation, a glossary of terms, a detailed list of sources, and an index. "The Race to Save the Lord God Bird" is a readable and informative account of the actions and circumstances that brought the ivory-bill woodpecker to near-extinction in spite of a persistent human fascination with the bird and concerted efforts to save it. For more information on sightings of the ivory-bill since it was presumed extinct in the 1940s, see Tim Gallagher's book "The Grail Bird: Hot on the Trail of the Ivory-billed Woodpecker".

At the risk of sounding blasphemous let me simply say "Lord God, what a book!" This book belongs on your MUST READ list!

This is a perfect example of how nonfiction should be written. Every school and public library should have a copy of this book. It is a valuable addition to the study of man, nature, and the environment.

Phillip Hoose's wonderful book captures the reader's attention and doesn't let it go till the very end of a beautifully written account of one of the most magnificent birds ever to grace this land. The cover of the book, not to mention the title, immediately attracts attention and after reading it the reader clearly understands why this bird was referred to as the Lord God Bird.

Hoose introduces us to collectors like Brewster and Wayne who helped lead to the bird's demise. There are the corporate villains in the form of the Chicago Mill and Lumber Company and the Singer Manufacturing Company who could have saved the last real refuge of the Lord God Bird but who chose profit over conservation when the Singer Tract was not spared from the woodcutter's ax. There are heroes to this story. You will meet Jim Tanner, "Doc" Allen, and J. J. Kuhn who worked tirelessly to save the species. Having read this book I felt that Jim Tanner was definitely someone I wished that I had known personally.

Educators will find countless lessons on environmental awareness, extinction of species, and the recklessness with which man has "civilized" the wilderness.

Well done Mr. Hoose, well done.

I thought that this book was well written, reasearched, and thought through. But as a 12 year old I didn't enjoy it quite as much as i think an older person would. I think that the author wrote the stories well, and made them very drawing. This book was not one of my favorite books, partially because it was very hard to read. The other reason was beause to me it was a bit confusing. I could see him doing a kids version of the same book, but making it a bit simpler or shorter. I thought that the author did a great job in writing this book, but I think you should wait to read it until you are a bit older. Some people I know thought it was a great book, but they're older than me. So again I thought that this was an o.k. book, but not a great kid's read.

I truly enjoyed this book. The only reason it is not getting 5 stars is b/c I felt a litle misled by the synopsis on the back. I thought the entire book would be about wolves and Yellowstone. The book was about these topics but also much more about the author's relationships with her animals. As an animal lover, I really enjoyed these parts of the book. And as a married person without children, I can relate when she writes about people not treating pets as family or the lack of sensitivity towards animals (as opposed to humans).

I bought this book after visiting Yellowstone recently and it was a good follow-up to my trip. How could anyone not have been excited about the reintroduction of wolves into the park. What an amazing story.

This is an excellent book and has much to offer for nature /animal lovers, how difficult such a project is, to combat many opposing forces. It has a measure of spirituality, romance and animal nature.

Someone should ban this woman from ever using a simile or a metaphor again. At least she could refrain from using 3 or 4 of them in every sentence. I like wolves and from reading the back of the book it sounded interesting. I wish that I would have read the first chapter before buying this book. It might have some decent imformation in it, but I just about threw up from trying to get past the first chapter.

I bought the book thinking it was about wolves and yellow stone-what the book described on the back. But in short it seemed that the majority was an auto-biography about woman who loved wolves. Other than that the book was good but I wish it had more stuff about the actual subject.

I cannot express in words how much I loved this book. It is more in my heart than words on a page. I felt uplifted at times and horribly saddened at other times. I cried out loud and smiled big smiles when a part of the book touched me. Rene had many, many wonderful experiences and shared her life with so many wonderful people and animals. I could not put the book down. I had bought this book for my Daughter as a Christmas gift. She is studying to be a wildlife bilogist and her passion is the wolf. Ashley (my daughter) reminds me so much of Rene that it scares me. Her passion to fight for the wolf is exactly what I wish for my daughter. I recomend this book to anyone who loves wildlife and who wants to fight for their rights. Rene is an asset to the world of wildlife and should be commended on such honorable work. Great book! Buy it! together we can all make a difference!

I got this as a Christmas gift for my parents. Its illustrations are really nice & its informative. I thought this would make a great coffee table book, plus it was diffrent than your average nature photo book. My parents loved this book. Its a great addition to any nature lovers collection.

...a Very good book. The ilustrations are fantastic and the historical backgrounds on each species are very good.

Reading about extinct animals is always a bit of a sad and revolting reading but it's also a very interesting one. Read about this book on Bill Bryson's "A Short History of nearly Everything" so i bought it.

Very satisfied.

I'm enjoying the reading very much. But a little disappointed because I expected many more animals. It's completely understandable that the authors decided to write only on the species they chose. Also is very disappointing the lack of data about the extinct species, although it's not to blame on the authors, who made a comprehensive research.
The fact that the authors have chosen to write and draw only on those animals which they could find preserved guarantees great quality and accuracy reproduction. But I think it could be expanded in another book which dates back to the first migrations, or at least the lapse of writen history. Of course, there will be even less biologic data, and reproductions will be based on bones and semi-fossils, but it would have an even bigger impact.

I found this to be an excellent, but simple book. I say it in this way in that it is one that is a quick overview of the species involved, but also one that makes me appreciate what has been lost. It's not an in-depth biological study nor is it intended to be.

It's also has two sides in that it shows the wonder of nature and how amazing it is, but by the end of the book, it left me depressed. So much has been lost and this book makes me appreciate it. It give me the motivation to do what I can, however little that is, to perhaps help prevent this in the future.

I read this book several time and every time I went, "Wow!"

Beautiful, interesting, well-written book, but it is clearly not intended as a scientific monograph, so if that is what you want you'd better look elsewhere.

Most of the species covered are rodents and birds, with some reptiles and larger mammals thrown in. All are beautifully illustrated.

While there are certainly many species in the book wiped out by direct human action (hunting & habitat destruction) in recorded history, most of the lost species seem to have been wiped out by indirect human action--the introduction of rats, cats, and foxes to the (usually) isolated island habitats by modern humans meant the end for the species which had evolved without these creatures. Interestingly, many of the species seem to have barely survived only in niche habitats even before the arrival of European colonists, etc. Two other species seem to have been wiped out by a volcanic eruption and a hurricane, respectively, in their very small habitats.

The book also records many instances of the last known specimens of clearly endangered species being killed by hunters and museum collectors (!), often identified by name. While it makes you wonder what makes these people tick, it sure seems like any species reduced to a handful of survivors didn't have long for this world in any event.

And the good news? Well, it sounds like many (by by no means all) of the lost species are survived--at least for now--by closely-related species. Hopefully we'll do better with these survivors!

they won't be there very long if Bush has his way. he's imposing a new rule to slaughter all the wolves in the park because of a few disgruntled ranchers.

check it out for all the info: http://www.nrdcactionfund.org/campaigns/wildlife/save-endangered-gray-wolves.html

This is a well written combination of scientific discussion of the effect of first 10 years of the return of wolves to the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem and amazing stories of individual wolves. I highly recommend this book to anyone interested in the effect of restoring the full compliment of species to an ecosystem. It is easily approchable by the average non-scientist reader.

I have read over 40 books about wolves over 35 years and this one stands out as one of the very best.

The book has two main themes -- the life histories of individual wolves brought to Yellowstone and their packs, and what wildlife biologists actually do to accomplish a successful introduction and gather the histories of these wolves. Both these themes are covered very well in exceptionally graceful writing.

Missing intentionally is a blow by blow history of the political controversy surrounding the introduction, and I am glad for that -- the focus remains on the wolves and how they deal with the challenges they face. The political history has been covered in other books and is a fairly depressing story of people shouting at each other.

The authors ability to describe in remarkable detail on the histories of individual wolves and their packs was aided enormously by the radio collars the placed on select individuals and the high visibility of the wolves in Yellowstone. The picture that emerges is of an enormously rich, complex, dynamic and tough world. Surviving is a constant challenge for a wolf, even in this prey-rich environment, and few wolves make it past 4-5 years old, much younger than the lives of wolves in captivity.

Their is so much information about their behavior that the wolves emerge as distinct individuals with dramatically different personalities and styles. Packs develop unique cultures (e.g. hunting bison). The static alpha male - alpha female hierarchy so often described in other books turns out to be far more variable with much greater roles in some packs for the alpha female and non-alpha wolves.

The authors note how frequently the wolves' behavior continues to them, particularly social behavior. There are far more ways to organize and "run" a wolf pack then previously thought, and the complexity of the dynamics described resembles human social interactions to a remarkable degree.

There is a lot that can be learned even by well-read wolf enthusiasts from reading this book. Yet, for those who are just beginning to read about wolves, this book is a superb introduction to these animals that get more fascinating the more we know about them.

Those who enjoyed the insight into the life of a wildlife biologist in this book would no doubt also enjoy Craig Packer's Into Africa, an account of his work with the social histories of African lion prides.

This has to be the best book I have read in years about the Yellowstone National Park's reintroduction of the wolves. Entertaining and very educational. I highly advise anyone that would like to further there education on the history of the Yellowstone Wolves to read this book. It was pure enjoyment.

This book was a great read and, despite the rip-off for the CDN dollar by the publisher, I was very happy to recieve this in the mail. It made a good, informative and sweet read for those who love wildlife and wolves. The narrative isn`t borring or scientific which makes it easy to read. Of course there are a few things that bothered me while reading this.

Firstly, the people didn`t realy explore alternatives to wolves eating livestock, they just kind of shot them and didn`t take the responsibility to practice other non-lethal methods of controling wolves such as the use of guard dgs or deterrents. I was also looking forward to a lot more pictures of wolves, and while the ones in the book were beautiful, they were small and there were few. I really wish that the authors could have elaborated more about the indivdual wolves` that were the founders of Yellowstone`s packs. it seemed that just one peice of each wolf wasn`t enough to capture their intimate lives (and not enough pictures of the wolves themselves). If they ever re-do this book, hopefully more can be placed on pictures and what has happened to the wolves and their packs in yellowstone.

I've just finished reading this book for the fourth time, and although I've not left the house I feel like I've been around the world. The descriptions and language were haunting yet beautiful and make me yearn to turn back time. This is an absolutely inspiring work, and I hope to read more from this passionate and talented author soon.

Quite an interesting book, and in some ways, rather haunting.There is a lot more to this book than the somewhat small size of it would seem.It is also somewhat engrossing.

Uh, like it's difficult to review a book that I haven't, like, received yet, dudes. Maybe if you didn't keep, like, pushing the delivery date to the right, I could maybe, like, have something more constructive to contribute.

For 310 of the most engrossing pages about things that live on earth, you won't do much better than Scott Wiedensaul's The Ghost With Trembling Wings. I came at the book with virtually no science ability and only a passing knowledge of naturalism or species conservation, but it doesn't matter - Trembling Wings works so effectively because all it really requires to catch onto Wiedensaul's point of view is any sort of awe at the variety of organisms and the varied regions in which they show up. Wiedensaul's prose is transporting in the best way - he gives the mosquito-encrusted white reaches of Siberia the same impressive eloquence that he gives the rivers of Louisiana or the Mato Grasso region of Brazil. His eloquence is so surprising, he manages to find poetry in the everyday actions of species, fascinating or not. Check out this description simply of film footage of the Thylacine in Tasmania: "Though the thylacine was said to be stiff and awkward in its movements, this one seemed as graceful as the cramped, artificial surroundings would permit; the film showed a lithe, tapered animal, but to an eye used to a dog or wolf, the proportions seemed a bit off - the head looked too long and conical, the ears too small, the almost tubular tail too straight and stiff." It's written mastery like that that makes The Ghost With Trembling Wings as beautifully specific as it is evocatively universal, giving vivid breadth to the human need to penetrate the outside world in whatever form rouses our deepest passions.

of supposedly lost and newly rediscovered species. Weidensaul concentrates on the few selected species which have been catalogued as extinct, yet which anecdotal evidence tells us may still be out there. This is a wonderful book, full of travelogues and hope by the author in search of supposed mystery creatures, both likely and unlikely. He maintains a skeptical yet optimistic mind in his own searches and touches upon species as varied as the "extinct" Sempler's Warbler and the Loch Ness "monster". It is carefully and objectively written without a hint of sensationalism, but maintains an open discourse related to the species' possible existence. One of the top three "cryptozoology" guides; the other favorite of mine is Matthew Bille's book on a similar subject. Toss the rest as National Enquirer material, including the venerable Heuvelmans' tome.

This book does a great job of explaining the history of many of our common plants and foods, and why they are what they are. It's a great tool for helping us understand how foods have co-evolved with us and with other species. The story is basic to our understanding of the whole web of life. It's an awesome and extremely understandable and fascinating book. Buy it!

Anachronistic fruiting structures and their traditional, but unfortunately extinct, dispersers makes for a fascinating scientific/natural history topic. Unfortunately, it was Ms. Barlow who tackled this one and in the first 13 pages has made more references to 'ghosts' and 'haunted groves' than my scientific stomach can retain. To be fair, the first chapter is entitled 'Ghost Stories' - what should I have expected?! If I'd read the Table of Contents and skimmed its content, I probably would have recognized the work for what it seems to be - a knock-off parasite of the scholarly paper-back book genre. Who the hell are the Perseus Book Group anyway -- certainly not Harvard Press!

The Ghosts of Evolution is based on some very interesting observations, and the science cited is worth looking into. I would thoroughly recommend this to anyone who is seriously interested in evolutionary theory.
On the downside the book does suffer from the fact that, while the idea is intriguing, it has been spread to thin. It is too long, and too chatty, nevertheless, the basic contention proposed in the book is fascinating enough to make it worth reading

"The tusks that clashed in mighty brawls
Of mastodons, are billiard balls..."
--from a poem by Arthur Guiterman

The exciting idea in this book is that there are trees that "lament" the passing of the mastodons and the other extinct megafauna that once distributed their seeds. What animal now regularly eats the avocado whole, swallows the seed and excretes it far from the tree in a steamy, nourishing pile of dung? No such animal exists in the Western Hemisphere to which the avocado is native. (Barlow reports that elephants in Africa, where the avocado has been introduced, eat the avocado and do indeed excrete its pit whole.)

How about the mango with its pulp that adheres so tightly to the rather large pit? As Barlow surmises, such fruits were "designed" for mutualists that would take the fruit whole and let the pit pass through their digestive systems to emerge intact for germination away from the mother tree. Note that the avocado pit is not only too large to pass comfortably through the digestive system of any current native animal of the Americas, but is also highly toxic so that such an animal would have quickly learned not to chew it. Note too that the mango pit is extremely hard, thus encouraging a large animal to swallow it along with the closely adhering pulp rather than try to chew it or spit it out. Consider also the papaya. The fruit are large and soft so that a large animal could easily take one into its mouth and just mash it lightly and swallow. Note too that the fruits of the papaya tree grow not high in the tree, nor is the tree a low lying bush. Instead the tree is taller than a bush but its fruits are clustered at a height supermarket convenient for a large animal to pluck.

Barlow considers a number of other trees, the honey locust and the osage orange, for example, as examples of ecological anachronisms, trees that have out-lived their mutualists and consequently must form new partnerships with other seed distributors or face extinction. For those trees that have pleased humans, the avocado, the mango, the papaya, etc., there is no immediate danger, but some other trees are at the edge of extinction. Their fruits fall to the ground and stay there until they rot. New trees grow only down hill when an occasional flood of water moves their fruit to a new location.

Barlow also sees ghosts from the Mesozoic era. She writes, "Ghosts of dinosaurs are easy to conjure in October and November wherever city landscapers planted ginkgo trees...even when I forget to look for the ghosts of dinosaurs my nose alerts me to their presence. Only a carrion eater could find the odor of fallen ginkgo fruit appealing. Before beginning this book, I wrongly blamed the alcoholic homeless for the vomitlike stench in Washington Square Park." (p. 12)

In short this book is about those trees--anachronisms--have been without their mutualists since the mass extinction of the megafauna of the Western Hemisphere that took place about 13,000 years ago. It is a popular expansion on some original work done by ethnologist Daniel H. Janzen and paleontologist Paul S. Martin, their seminal paper appearing in the journal Science in 1982. Connie Barlow's prose is not only very readable, but is full of the excitement of scientific discovery, vivid and concrete, and packed with an amazing amount of information so that not only the trees described, but the giant sloths, mastodons and mammoths--the ghosts of harvests past--come alive on the pages.

What Barlow does more than anything is open our eyes to the ecological nature of fruit and the relationships that exist between trees and the animals that eat the fruit. We learn how color, taste, aroma, texture, nutritional value, toughness of rind, size, shape, number of seeds and how they are encased, etc.--how all these qualities of fruit have evolved to entice the animals that will faithfully distribute the seeds, but also how some qualities discourage other animals, "pulp thieves" or "seed predators," that benefit from the food provided by the tree, but do not help in its propagation.

The story of the desert gourd was of particular interest to me because during many walks in the chaparral and deserts of California I have come across this vine with its hard, dry and unattractive gourds that were never picked or eaten. Barlow theorizes that the plant is also an anachronism, and that there did exist in the past animals that found the gourds, if not delicious, at least palatable.

Another curious anachronism reported on is the devil's claw of the Chihuahuan desert of Mexico. This plant produces a most amazing apparatus that wraps itself around an animal's foot and claw-like clings to the animal, dribbling its seeds to the ground as the animal moves. There is a photo of the claw on page 151 wrapped around a human ankle. Incidentally, the text is enhanced by a number of interesting black and white photos of the trees and their fruits.

This is one of the most interesting and original books on evolution that I have read in recent years, and one of the most informative.

Follow Connie Barlow's lead. Next time you're at the grocery, spend some time in the fruits and veggie section. Pick up an avocado, hefting it in your hand. You can feel the weight of that huge seed within. Compare it with the nearby oranges or apples. Mum warned you not to swallow the seeds when you were a child, remember? Trees would sprout in your tummy. No worries about trying to swallow that avocado seed, is there? While you're squeezing that avocado, think back on autumn skies sparkling with maple or sycamore seeds fluttering in the chill winds. Why the absurd difference in size? Is it important?

Connie Barlow thinks these differences are very important. As she reminds us, all those fruits have been around since long before humans confined them to orchards. Winged maple seeds can flit about on the mildest breeze. The avocado, however, clearly needs a little help finding a sprouting site. Before orchardists, who was there to help it reach one? Trees don't like to just drop seeds and hope for the best. Too many seeds in one place results in choking thicket or a sunlight-blocking canopy. The key is dispersal. Leave home, kids, and start life somewhere else. But a rock-sized hunk like an avocado or a honey locust needs a lift. Who gave ancient avocados a ride to a new home?

According to Paul Martin and David Janzen, the carriers were animals who don't exist any more. Barlow follows this pair of researchers who began a new scientific quest by wondering why jungle fruit was rotting under Costa Rican trees. All life struggles to continue through succeeding generations, and lying on the ground covered in fuzz doesn't bode success. Janzen thought there was something missing - an animal that might have conveyed the fruit elsewhere to launch the new generation. As they studied the problem, according to Barlow, they concluded that many fruits and their seeds are living on borrowed time. The animals that helped disseminate seeds for many trees are long extinct.

Barlow belongs at the head of the class for understanding and explaining how evolution works. She shows there's more to the story than tracing single lineages with subtle adjustments in limb, leaf, or mass. Plant life has coevolved with animal species. In developing defenses against animals eating their foliage, plants also needed allies to spread new sprouts. Some seeds travelled with thorns, but others were oversized for that means. Big seeds had to be swallowed, some to be passed intact with dung, but others to initiate the germination process within the gut before passage. All these mechanisms are specific, but the loss of partners have left many tree species vulnerable. Some have "second string" dispersers, but these may not be adequate.

Barlow guides us around the planet and through time, introducing us to trees, their fruits and their likely seed dispersing partners. She reminds us that North America evolved the horse, the camel and a variety of other animals that are either missing or were re-introduced. In those days, the American camel had two sets of incisor teeth. Current Old World camels have a lower set and a hard plate above. New Zealand had no large mammals. Who conveyed the seeds of fifty four species of divaricate plants around the islands? Probably the eleven extinct species of moa native to the islands. Why do some trees around the world have thorns that cease growing above a certain height? There used to be taller animals that could reach the fruits convey them away. Why did the digestive tracts of horses and cows evolve differently? They both eat grass. Barlow examines these and other questions with exquisite style, showing where the evidence shows well and where further work is required. And there is plenty for the young researcher to consider following.

If the findings of the past weren't surprising enough, Barlow's proposals for the future will leave many astounded. Especially farmers and ranchers. Elephants on the Prairies? Camels in Utah [they were there once, why not again?] Hand planted trees where the natural dispersers have disappeared? These are serious questions, because extinction isn't an isolated event. Barlow points out the "cascade effect" engendered by all extinctions. There are many important reasons to read this book. It may amaze you, but be reassured you will not be bored.