Natural Acts: A Sidelong View of Science and Nature

Natural Acts: A Sidelong View of Science and Nature

by David Quammen
Natural Acts: A Sidelong View of Science and Nature

Natural Acts: A Sidelong View of Science and Nature

by David Quammen

Paperback(Reprint)

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Overview

"Lively writing about science and nature depends less on the offering of good answers, I think, than on the offering of good questions," said David Quammen in the original introduction to Natural Acts. For more than two decades, he has stuck to that credo. In this updated version of curiosity leads him from New Mexico to Romania, from the Congo to the Amazon, asking questions about mosquitoes (what are their redeeming merits?), dinosaurs (how did they change the life of a dyslexic Vietnam vet?), and cloning (can it save endangered species?).

This revised and expanded edition best-loved "Natural Acts" columns, which first appeared in Outside magazine in the early 1980s, and includes recent pieces such as "Planet of Weeds," an influential new Natural Acts is an eye-opening journey that will please both Quammen fans and newcomers to his work.


Product Details

ISBN-13: 9780393333602
Publisher: Norton, W. W. & Company, Inc.
Publication date: 03/04/2009
Edition description: Reprint
Pages: 352
Sales rank: 571,718
Product dimensions: 5.50(w) x 8.10(h) x 0.90(d)

About the Author

David Quammen is the author of The Song of the Dodo, among other books. He has been honored with the John Burroughs Medal for nature writing, an Academy Award in Literature from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, an award in the art of the essay from PEN, and (three times) the National Magazine Award. Quammen is also a contributing writer for National Geographic. He lives in Bozeman, Montana.

Table of Contents

New, Retrospective Introduction: Learning Curve (2007)     7
Old, Ingenuous Introduction: An Inordinate Fondness for Beetles (1985)     13
All God's Vermin
Sympathy for the Devil (1981)     21
Has Success Spoiled the Crow? (1983)     27
The Widow Knows (1982)     32
The Troubled Gaze of the Octopus (1984)     37
Avatars of the Soul in Malaya (1984)     43
Rumors of a Snake (1984)     48
Wool of Bat (1982)     54
Prophets and Pariahs
The Excavation of Jack Horner (1984)     61
The Lives of Eugene Marais (1981)     72
The Man with the Metal Nose (1983)     79
Animal Rights and Beyond (1984)     85
Alias Benowitz Shoe Repair (1983)     91
The Tree People (1984)     97
Eloquent Practices, Natural Acts
Love's Martyrs (1983)     105
A Deathly Chill (1983)     111
Is Sex Necessary? (1982)     117
Desert Sanitaire (1983)     123
Jeremy Bentham, the Pieta, and a Precious Few Grayling (1982)     130
Yin and Yang in the Tularosa Basin (1985)     144
After Thoughts
Planet of Weeds (1998)     161
The River Jumps Over the Mountain (2002)     189
ThePost-Communist Wolf (2000)     209
The Megatransect (2000-2001)     228
A Passion for Order (2007)     279
Citizen Wiley (2006)     289
Clone Your Troubles Away (2005)     296
Author's Note     321
Partial Sources     323
Index     339
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