New Titles

 

1) Tuttle-Adams, Linda. Baby Bird Identification: A North American Guide. 2022. Comstock/Cornell University Press. Paperback: 401 pages. Price: $39.95 U.S.

PUBLISHER’S SUMMARY: Baby Bird Identification is a comprehensive illustrated guide for distinguishing hundreds of North American bird species in their early stages of life. From the just hatched to the fledgling, Linda Tuttle-Adams walks readers through the process of identifying baby birds that they may encounter in the wild―a first step to ensuring proper care and rehabilitation.

     Successful rehabilitation of birds found in the wild requires species-specific attention. But the identification of a baby bird, whether altricial or precocial, may seem overwhelming at first, even to a trained ornithologist. Tuttle-Adams lays out an approachable and systematic method for discerning a baby bird's identity, offering descriptions of telling anatomical and environmental features as well as details of a bird's day-to-day growth.

      With over four hundred original watercolor paintings and an illustrated glossary, Baby Bird Identification is an invaluable resource for wildlife rehabilitators, those who find baby birds in their yards or recreational places, and anyone who enjoys watching or studying birds in the wild.

RECOMMENDATION: A MUST have for all bird rehabilitators in the continental United States and Canada!  

 

 

2) Walther, Michael and Julian P. Hume. Extinct Birds of Hawaii (Second Edition). 2022. Mutual Publishing. Hardbound: 260 pages. Price: $23.95 U.S.

PUBLISHER’S SUMMARY: Extinct Birds of Hawai'i captures the vanishing world of unique bird species that has slipped away in the Islands mostly due to human frivolity and unconcern. Richly illustrated, including paintings by Julian P. Hume (many painted specifically for this volume), it enables us to enjoy vicariously avian life unique to Hawai'i that exists no longer. Extinct Birds of Hawai'i also sends a powerful message: Although Hawai'i is well-known for its unique scenic beauty and its fascinating native flora, fauna, bird and marine life, it is also called the extinction capital of the world. The Islands' seventy-seven bird species and sub-species extinctions account for approximately fifteen percent of global bird extinctions during the last seven-hundred years. On some islands over eighty percent of the original land bird species are now extinct. 

     This new edition includes many new paintings, photographs, charts, and updates on all of the recently extinct species. The extinction of an entire family, the Mohoidae, receives expanded coverage and new artwork.

     With the many agents of extinction still operating in the Islands' forests, Hawai'i's remaining native land birds are at a high risk of being lost forever. Many birdwatchers, nature lovers, and eco-tourists are unaware of the tremendous loss of species that has occurred in this remote archipelago. Extinct Birds of Hawai'i shows the bird life that has been lost and calls attention to the urgent need for preservation action.

RECOMMENDATION: The page count has increased from 238 to 260. Julian P. Hume's artwork highlights this book! This title is a must have for those with an interest in extinct birds!

 

3) Millet, Lydia. Dinosaurs: A Novel. 2022. W. W. Norton. Hardbound: 230 pages. Price: $26.95 U.S.

PUBLISHER’S SUMMARY: Over twelve novels and two collections Lydia Millet has emerged as a major American novelist. Hailed as "a writer without limits" (Karen Russell) and "a stone-cold genius" (Jenny Offill), Millet makes fiction that vividly evokes the ties between people and other animals and the crisis of extinction.

     Her exquisite new novel is the story of a man named Gil who walks from New York to Arizona to recover from a failed love. After he arrives, new neighbors move into the glass-walled house next door and his life begins to mesh with theirs. In this warmly textured, drily funny, and philosophical account of Gil’s unexpected devotion to the family, Millet explores the uncanny territory where the self ends and community begins―what one person can do in a world beset by emergencies.

      Dinosaurs is both sharp-edged and tender, an emotionally moving, intellectually resonant novel that asks: In the shadow of existential threat, where does hope live?

RECOMMENDATION: If you enjoyed the author's other books, you will enjoy this one!

 

 

 

4) Contreras, Alan, Vjera Thompson, and Nolan Clements (editors). A History of Oregon Ornithology: From Territorial Days to the Rise of Birding. 2022. Oregon State University Press. Paperback: 284 pages. Price: $34.95 U.S.

PUBLISHER’S SUMMARY: The study of birds was, in its early years, often driven by passionate amateurs in a localized context. A History of Oregon Ornithology takes readers  from the Lewis and Clark expedition, through the professionalization of the field, and to the mid-twentieth century, focusing on how birding and related amateur field observation grew outside the realms of academia and conservation agencies.
 
     Editors Alan Contreras, Vjera Thompson, and Nolan Clements have assembled chapters exploring the differences and interplay between the amateur and professional study of birds, along with discussions of early birding societies, notable observers, and ornithological studies. The book includes chapters on such significant ornithologists as Charles Bendire, William L. Finley, Ira Gabrielson, Stanley Jewett, and David B. Marshall. It also notes the sometimes-overlooked contributions of women to our expanding knowledge of western birds. Special attention is paid to the development of seabird observation, the impact of the Internet, and the rise of digital resources for bird observers.
 
     Intended for readers interested in the history of Oregon, scientific explorations in the West, and the origins of modern birding and field ornithology, A History of Oregon Ornithology offers a detailed and entertaining account of the study of birds in the Pacific Northwest.

RECOMMENDATION: A must have for those with an interest in Oregon's ornithological history!

 

5) Goodison, Natalie Jayne. Introducing the Medieval Swan. 2022. University of Wales Press. Paperback: 197 pages. Price: $15.00 U.S.

PUBLISHER’S SUMMARY: Swans possess a striking beauty, and they are imbued with a sense of regal mystery that makes them some of the most fascinating of wild creatures. Introducing the Medieval Swan traces those characteristics to their roots in the medieval era. Opening with a study of the natural history of the swan as understood in the period, the book then moves to literary motifs that feature swans transforming into humans, particularly the legend of the Knight of the Swan. The third chapter examines the place of the swan as an icon of the Lancasters, and the book then explores the swan’s place as a delicacy at extravagant feasts. Finally, we learn how the characteristics the medieval era associated with swans developed over the centuries to the present.

RECOMMENDATION: A must have for those with an interest in medieval history and/or swans.

6) Flores, Dan. Wild New World: The Epic Story of Animals and People in America. 2022. W. W. Norton & Company. Hardbound: 448 pages. Price: $30.00 U.S.

PUBLISHER’S SUMMARY: In 1908, near Folsom, New Mexico, a cowboy discovered the remains of a herd of extinct giant bison. By examining flint points embedded in the bones, archeologists later determined that a band of humans had killed and butchered the animals 12,450 years ago. This discovery vastly expanded America’s known human history but also revealed the long-standing danger Homo sapiens presented to the continent’s evolutionary richness.

     Distinguished author Dan Flores’s ambitious history chronicles the epoch in which humans and animals have coexisted in the “wild new world” of North America―a place shaped both by its own grand evolutionary forces and by momentous arrivals from Asia, Africa, and Europe. With portraits of iconic creatures such as mammoths, horses, wolves, and bison, Flores describes the evolution and historical ecology of North America like never before.

      The arrival of humans precipitated an extraordinary disruption of this teeming environment. Flores treats humans not as a species apart but as a new animal entering two continents that had never seen our likes before. He shows how our long past as carnivorous hunters helped us settle America, initially establishing a coast-to-coast culture that lasted longer than the present United States. But humanity’s success had devastating consequences for other creatures. In telling this epic story, Flores traces the origins of today’s “Sixth Extinction” to the spread of humans around the world; tracks the story of a hundred centuries of Native America; explains how Old World ideologies precipitated 400 years of market-driven slaughter that devastated so many ancient American species; and explores the decline and miraculous recovery of species in recent decades.

      In thrilling narrative style, informed by genomic science, evolutionary biology, and environmental history, Flores celebrates the astonishing bestiary that arose on our continent and introduces the complex human cultures and individuals who hastened its eradication, studied America’s animals, and moved heaven and earth to rescue them. Eons in scope and continental in scale, Wild New World is a sweeping yet intimate Big History of the animal-human story in America.

RECOMMENDATION: If you enjoyed the author's other books, you will enjoy this one!

 

7) Thorogood, Chris. Chasing Plants: Journeys with a Botanist through Rainforests, Swamps, and Mountains. 2022. Kew/University of Chicago Press. Hardbound: 288 pages. Price: $27.50 U.S.

PUBLISHER’S SUMMARY: From an acclaimed botanist and artist, a thrilling and beautifully illustrated expedition around the globe in search of the world’s most extraordinary plants.

     After making a strange discovery on a childhood trip to Ikea—a stand of sap-sucking, leafless broomrapes, stealing nutrients from their neighbors’ roots—Chris Thorogood dreamed of becoming a botanist and would stop at nothing to feed his growing addiction to plants. In his hair-raising adventures across Europe, Africa, the Middle East, and Asia, Thorogood treads a death-defying path over cliffs, up erupting volcanoes, through typhoons, and out into the very heart of the world’s vast, green wilderness. Along the way, he encounters pitcher plants, irises, and orchids more heart-piercingly beautiful than could ever be imagined.
 
       But with Thorogood as our guide in Chasing Plants, we not only imagine: we see. An internationally acclaimed botanical illustrator, Thorogood conjures his adventures spent seed-collecting and conserving plants around the world back to life in his electric paintings, which feature throughout the book. They bring plants out of the shadows, challenging us to see their intrigue and their character, and helping us to understand why plant species must be protected. To join Thorogood in his wild adventures is to be cast under his green spell: readers will never think of plants the same way again.

RECOMMENDATION: The author's artwork is worth the price of the book alone!

 

8) Gruesser, John Cullen (editor). Animals in the American Classics: How Natural History Inspired Great Fiction. 2022. Texas A&M University Press. Hardbound: 298 pages. Price: $38.00 U.S.

PUBLISHER’S SUMMARY: As defined by conservation biologist Thomas Fleishner, natural history is “a practice of intentional, focused receptivity to the more-than-human world . . . one of the oldest continuous human traditions.” Seldom is this idea so clearly reflected as in classic works of American fiction of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.

     John Cullen Gruesser’s edited volume Animals in the American Classics: How Natural History Inspired Great Fiction features essays by prominent literary scholars that showcase natural history and the multifaceted role of animals in well-known works of fiction, from Washington Irving in the early nineteenth century to Cormac McCarthy in the late twentieth century, and including short stories and novels by Edgar Allan Poe, Herman Melville, Mark Twain, Zora Neale Hurston, William Faulkner, Ernest Hemingway, Jack London, John Steinbeck, and Harper Lee.

     As an introduction to or a new way of thinking about some of the best-known and most beloved literary texts this nation has produced, Animals in the American Classics considers fundamental questions of ethics and animal intelligence as well as similarities among racism, ageism, misogyny, and speciesism.  

      With their awareness of Poe’s “more-than-casual knowledge of natural science,” Mark Twain’s proto–animal rights sensibilities, and Hurston’s training as an anthropologist, the contributors show that by drawing attention to and thinking like an animal, fiction tests the limits of humanity.

RECOMMENDATION: A must read for anyone with an interest in American literature.    

 

9) Kowal, Mary Robinette. The Spare Man. 2022. Tor Trade. Paperback: 357 pages. Price: $19.99 U.S.

PUBLISHER’S SUMMARY: Hugo, Locus, and Nebula-Award winner Mary Robinette Kowal blends her no-nonsense approach to life in space with her talent for creating glittering high-society in this stylish SF mystery, The Spare Man.

     Tesla Crane, a brilliant inventor and an heiress, is on her honeymoon on an interplanetary space liner, cruising between the Moon and Mars. She’s traveling incognito and is reveling in her anonymity. Then someone is murdered and the festering chowderheads who run security have the audacity to arrest her spouse. Armed with banter, martinis and her small service dog, Tesla is determined to solve the crime so that the newlyweds can get back to canoodling―and keep the real killer from striking again.

RECOMMENDATION: This book is basically The Thin Man set in Space! If you enjoyed the author's other works you should enjoy this one.