I’ve just returned from a trip that entailed several around-the-clock flights. To keep from going crazy I read several outstanding books, one about the Wright Brothers and one about the Lusitania.
I love to read quality fare so I always appreciate good suggestions. With that in mind, here are a few recommendations for great books to enjoy during the end of summer and the coming of fall days. They all relate to birds and/or nature.
The Homing Instinct
By Bernd Heinrich
Houghton Mifflin, 368 pages, $27
In naturalist Bernd Heinrich’s latest book, he explores the mysteries of migration and the homing instinct.
Windfall
By McKenzie FunkBy McKenzi Funk
Penguin Press HC, 320 pages, $27.95
Windfall is written on a premise we’re all familiar with: If there’s a way to make a buck, someone somewhere will figure out how.
Climate change, journalist McKenzie Funk argues, is no exception. Funk does an excellent job in conveying the real politik of environmental upheaval.
The Thing with Feathers
By Noah Strycker
Riverhead (Penguin), 302 pages. $27.95
Magpies mourn their dead. Parrots can keep a beat, even dance. Oh, and albatrosses fall in love. Noah Strycker collates these and other insights of bird behavior into The Thing With Feathers.
The Sixth Extinction
By Elizabeth Kolbert
Holt, 335 pages, $28
Elizabeth Kolbert’s book is the story of a human-made planetary mass extinction only seen in Earth’s geologic history five times before (The last was 65 million years ago).
A Feathered River Across the Sky
By Joel Greenberg
Bloomsbury USA, 304 pages, $12.75
Just before the dawn of the conservation movement in the U.S., the world’s most abundant bird was wiped out of existence, with the last individual dying in a zoo a century ago.
The Dawn of the Deed
by John A. Long
University of Chicago Press, 287 pages, $17
Dust mites inseminate their partners by stabbing their abdomens. The Argentine duck’s penis measures a whopping 16.5 inches. Ancient fish copulated male-on-female, rather than spawning in the water as modern fish do. These are a just a few of the revelations in paleontologist John Long’s highly entertaining and informative book on the evolution of sex.
The Best American Science and Nature Writing 2013
by Siddhartha Mukherjee and Tim Folger
Mariner Books, 368 pages, $14.95
This annual anthology lives up to its title—it is a rich mix of stories from Orion, The New Yorker, Harper’s, Scientific American, Virginia Quarterly Review, and more.
