The Song of the Dodo: Island Biogeography in an Age of Extinctions

All Available Formats + Editions

——

$14.99

NOOK Book

——

$14.99

The Song of the Dodo: Island Biogeography in an Age of Extinctions (eBook) Pub. Date: 3/15/2011 Publisher: Scribner
$2.49

$15.98

Paperback

$2.49

$15.98

The Song of the Dodo: Island Biogeography in an Age of Extinctions (Reprint) Pub. Date: 4/28/1997 Publisher: Scribner

Customers Who Bought This Also Bought

Advertising

Overview

David Quammen's book, The Song of the Dodo, is a brilliant, stirring work, breathtaking in its scope, far-reaching in its message — a crucial book in precarious times, which radically alters the way in which we understand the natural world and our place in that world. It's also a book full of entertainment and wonders.

In The Song of the Dodo, we follow Quammen's keen intellect through the ideas, theories, and experiments of prominent naturalists of the last two centuries. We trail after him as he travels the world, tracking the subject of island biogeography, which encompasses nothing less than the study of the origin and extinction of all species. Why is this island idea so important? Because islands are where species most commonly go extinct — and because, as Quammen points out, we live in an age when all of Earth's landscapes are being chopped into island-like fragments by human activity.

Through his eyes, we glimpse the nature of evolution and extinction, and in so doing come to understand the monumental diversity of our planet, and the importance of preserving its wild landscapes, animals, and plants. We also meet some fascinating human characters. By the book's end we are wiser, and more deeply concerned, but Quammen leaves us with a message of excitement and hope.

Interweaving personal observation, scientific theory, and history, this beautifully written book takes the reader on a globe-spanning tour of wild places and ideas. "An epic adventure of the mind and spirit."--Robert Kanigel, The New York Times Book Review

Editorial Reviews

Edward Neuert

In the annals of science there are many instances of pure, unleavened bad luck thwarting a researcher's best efforts. But there may be no more heartrending occurrence than that which befell naturalist Alfred Russel Wallace, in August of 1852, aboard the ship Helen. For four years Wallace had slogged through the mud, swollen rivers and mosquitoes of the Amazon basin, assembling a huge collection of exotic fauna. Then, in the middle of the Atlantic on his return voyage, the ship's other cargo of balsam resin spontaneously combusted. Wallace escaped to a lifeboat, and watched every pickled bird and dried butterfly go up in flames. He whiled away his time sketching dolphins and seabirds before being rescued. And, as David Quammen notes in The Song of the Dodo, something important came of this tragedy: the wreck of the Helen forced Wallace back out into the field to the Malay archipelago where, simultaneously with Darwin, he developed the theory of evolution.

Don't let Quammen's subtitle -- "Island Biogeography in an Age of Extinctions" -- scare you off. Yes, this is a big book, over 700 pages, and it deals with big science. But it's filled with stories of inquisitive humans like Wallace who, almost by chance, have drawn a complex picture of where species come from, and some frightening speculation about they are headed.

Quammen's book, put most simply, is a study of the distribution of life on islands. Because, as Quammen notes, "Isolation plus time yields divergence," islands by their geographical isolation have served to "give clarity to evolution." Nineteenth century naturalists like Wallace and Darwin were drawn to islands not only because of the giant tortoises, lizards and flightless birds that lived there, but because all that gigantism seemed to offer clues to the mystery of evolution in large, easy-to-read letters.

Quammen has spent the last 10 years following modern island biogeographers around the globe, and he makes their work accessible to the lay reader. Most important, though, is his contention that we have, in effect, developed the modern world into a series of biological islands, and have inevitably upped the threat of extinction by doing so. The Song of the Dodo could easily have been a hundred pages shorter, but Quammen's easygoing style, which readers may be familiar with from his columns in Outside magazine, makes the effort worthwhile. This book is a complicated and charming scientific history: a rare species indeed. -- Salon

Publishers Weekly

Quammen (Natural Acts) has successfully mixed genres in this highly impressive and thoroughly enjoyable work. The scientific journalism is first-rate, with the extremely technical field of island biogeography made fully accessible. We learn how the discipline developed and how it has changed conservation biology. And we learn just how critical this field is in the face of massive habitat destruction. The book is also a splendid example of natural history writing, for which Quammen traveled extensively. The Channel Islands off California and the Madagascan lemurs are captivatingly portrayed. Equally impressive are the character studies of the scientists who have been at the forefront of island biogeography. From his extended historical analysis of the journeys and insights of 19th-century biologist Alfred Russell Wallace to his field and laboratory interviews with many of the men and women who have followed in Wallace's intellectual wake, Quammen delightfully adds the human dimension to his discussion of science and natural history. Using a canvas as large as the world, he masterfully melds anecdotes about swimming elephants, collecting fresh feces from arboreal primates in Brazil and searching for the greater bird of paradise on the tiny island of Aru into an irreverent masterpiece. That a book on so technical a subject could be so enlightening, humorous and engaging is an extraordinary achievement. Author tour. (Apr.)

More Reviews (4) Fewer Reviews

Library Journal

The self-contained ecosystem is again used as a benchmark in this study of evolution and extinction by the author of Natural Acts (LJ 3/15/85).

Booknews

A captivating work of scientific journalism which explains the worldwide ecosystem decay which is at the root of countless species' extinction and which will continue to wipe out species as human activity carves the wilderness into ever-increasing island-like fragments. Annotation c. Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

Kirkus Reviews

Everything you might want to know about life and death on islands here, there, and everywhere on the globe can be found in Quammen's study of island biogeography.

The National Magazine Awardwinning science writer (Outside magazine; The Flight of the Iguana, 1988, etc.) asks, Why does island life differ radically from mainland life? The answer, not surprisingly, is evolution. There are unique evolutionary opportunities as well as pressures on islands. On oceanic islands, which arise from deep sea eruptions (such as the Galápagos Islands), there may be fewer varieties of species; the first arrivals often expand to fill all sorts of ecological niches in a process called adaptive radiation. So it was with the varied populations of finches that Charles Darwin observed in the Galápagos. Islands that sit on continental shelves near enough to mainlands to have been connected by land bridges at times of major glaciation may have animal species as varied as those on the mainland, but the species are likely to differ in their behavior or appearance from mainland relatives. Some reptiles isolated on islands grew large, like the Komodo dragon of Indonesia; some mammals shrank, like the pygmy elephants found in Sicily. Some birds became flightless, like the celebrated dodo native to Mauritius. Quammen provides abundant examples of the variables that can foster or doom populations, ranging from the sheer size of an island (big is better), to bouts of bad weather, to the introduction of farming and the animal camp followers of man: pigs, rats, and cats. The book's virtues include Quammen's vivid account of his treks to the world's wild places and interviews with the experts he finds there. The downside is too much of a muchness; Quammen's zeal to spill all his notes and a breezy style that grows wearying.

Taken in small bites, however, there is much to glean here about the wonders, and also the fragility, of life on earth.

From Barnes & Noble

The author's globe-circling journey to islands from Madagascar to Guam shows why island biogeography--the study of the distribution of species on islands & islandlike patches of landscape--yields important insights into the origin & extinction of species everywhere.

Product Details

ISBN-13: 9780684827124
Publisher: Scribner
Publication date: 4/28/1997
Edition description: Reprint
Pages: 704
Sales rank: 121,024
Product dimensions: 6.20 (w) x 9.10 (h) x 1.30 (d)

Meet the Author

David Quammen

David Quammen was born in 1948, near the outskirts of Cincinnati, Ohio, and spent much of his boyhood in an eastern deciduous forest there. His interest in the natural world — hiking through woods, grubbing in creeks, collecting insects, taking reptiles hostage and calling them pets — was so all-consuming that he would eventually, during adolescence, need remedial training in basketball.

At an early age he learned the word herpetologist and decided he might like to be one. But he had always been interested in writing; and at the age of 17, he met Thomas G. Savage, a Jesuit priest. Savage was to become a life changing teacher, fostering Quammen's literary ambitions and prospects, and encouraging him to attend college at Yale. He knew that at Yale Quammen would find a superb English department, and encounter people such as Robert Penn Warren, a great American novelist, poet, and critic. Despite his not having heard of Penn Warren, Quammen followed the priest's advice and enrolled at Yale. Fools luck was smiling on him, as were generous and trusting parents, and three years later he found himself studying Faulkner at the elbow of Mr. Warren, who became not just his second life changing teacher but also his mentor and friend. Quammen never forgot Thomas Savage's encouragement: The Song of the Dodo is dedicated to this vast-hearted curmudgeon, who died young in 1975.

In 1970, Quammen published his first book, a novel titled To Walk the Line, which had been steered toward daylight by Mr. Warren. Also that year, he began a two-year fellowship at Oxford University, England, where he continued studying Faulkner, loathed the climate, loathed the food, loathed the vestiges of upper-class snobbery, met a few wonderful people, and spent much of his time playing basketball (the remedial training had helped) for one of the university teams. Promptly after Oxford, Quammen moved to Montana, carrying all his possessions in a Volkswagen bus to this state in which he had never before set foot. The attractions of Montana were 1) trout fishing, 2) wild landscape, 3) solitude, and 4) its dissimilarity to Yale and Oxford. The winters are too cold for ivy.

Quammen made his living as a bartender, waiter, ghost writer, and fly-fishing guide until 1979. Since then he has written full time. In 1982 he married Kris Ellingsen, a Montana woman even more devoted to solitude than he is.

His published work includes two spy novels (The Zolta Configuration, The Soul of Viktor Tronko), a collection of short stories about father-son relationships (Blood Line), two collections of essays on science and nature (Natural Acts, The Flight of the Iguana), several hundred other magazine essays, features, and reviews, as well as The Song of the Dodo. From 1981 through 1995, he wrote a regular column about science and nature for Outside magazine, and in 1987 received the National Magazine Award in Essays and Criticism for work that appeared in the column. In 1994 he was co-winner of another National Magazine Award. In 1996 he received an Academy Award in literature from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. He remains a Montana resident, despite the arrival of cappuccino.

In 1998 Scribner will publish Strawberries Under Ice, a new collection of Quammen's magazine essays and features, subtitled "Wild Thoughts from Wild Places." The wild places in question, from which he has drawn observations and inspiration in recent years, include Tasmania, southern Chile, Madagascar, the Aru Islands of eastern Indonesia, Los Angeles, suburban Cincinnati, and of course, Montana.

Reading Group Discussion Points

Read an Excerpt

Chapter 1

THIRTY-SIX PERSIAN THROW RUGS

Let's start indoors. Let's start by imagining a fine Persian carpet and a hunting knife. The carpet is twelve feet by eighteen, say. That gives us 216 square feet of continuous woven material. Is the knife razor-sharp? If not, we hone it. We set about cutting the carpet into thirty-six equal pieces, each one a rectangle, two feet by three. Never mind the hardwood floor. The severing fibers release small tweaky noises, like the muted yelps of outraged Persian weavers. Never mind the weavers. When we're finished cutting, we measure the individual pieces, total them up — and find that, lo, there's still nearly 216 square feet of recognizably carpetlike stuff. But what does it amount to? Have we got thirty-six nice Persian throw rugs? No. All we're left with is three dozen ragged fragments, each one worthless and commencing to come apart.

Now take the same logic outdoors and it begins to explain why the tiger, Panthera tigris, has disappeared from the island of Bali. It casts light on the fact that the red fox, Vulpes vulpes, is missing from Bryce Canyon National Park. It suggests why the jaguar, the puma, and forty-five species of birds have been extirpated from a place called Barro Colorado Island — and why myriad other creatures are mysteriously absent from myriad other sites. An ecosystem is a tapestry of species and relationships. Chop away a section, isolate that section, and there arises the problem of unraveling.

For the past thirty years, professional ecologists have been murmuring about the phenomenon of unraveling ecosystems. Many of these scientists have become mesmerized by the phenomenon and, increasingly with time, worried. They have tried to study it in the field, using mist nets and bird bands, box traps and radio collars, ketamine, methyl bromide, formalin, tweezers. They have tried to predict its course, using elaborate abstractions played out on their computers. A few have blanched at what they saw — or thought they saw — coming. They have disagreed with their colleagues about particulars, arguing fiercely in the scientific journals. Some have issued alarms, directed at governments or the general public, but those alarms have been broadly worded to spare nonscientific audiences the intricate, persuasive details. Others have rebutted the alarmism or, in some cases, issued converse alarms. Mainly these scientists have been talking to one another.

They have invented terms for this phenomenon of unraveling ecosystems. Relaxation to equilibrium is one, probably the most euphemistic. In a similar sense your body, with its complicated organization, its apparent defiance of entropy, will relax toward equilibrium in the grave. Faunal collapse is another. But that one fails to encompass the category of floral collapse, which is also at issue. Thomas E. Lovejoy, a tropical ecologist at the Smithsonian Institution, has earned the right to coin his own term. Lovejoy's is ecosystem decay.

His metaphor is more scientific in tone than mine of the sliced-apart Persian carpet. What he means is that an ecosystem — under certain specifiable conditions — loses diversity the way a mass of uranium sheds neutrons. Plink, plink, plink, extinctions occur, steadily but without any evident cause. Species disappear. Whole categories of plants and animals vanish. What are the specifiable conditions? I'll describe them in the course of this book. I'll also lay siege to the illusion that ecosystem decay happens without cause.

Lovejoy's term is loaded with historical resonance. Think of radioactive decay back in the innocent early years of this century, before Hiroshima, before Alamogordo, before Hahn and Strassmann discovered nuclear fission. Radioactive decay, in those years, was just an intriguing phenomenon known to a handful of physicists — the young Robert Oppenheimer, for one. Likewise, until recently, with ecosystem decay. While the scientists have murmured, the general public has heard almost nothing. Faunal collapse? Relaxation to equilibrium? Even well-informed people with some fondness for the natural world have remained unaware that any such dark new idea is forcing itself on the world.

What about you? Maybe you have read something, and maybe cared, about the extinction of species. Passenger pigeon, great auk, Steller's sea cow, Schomburgk's deer, sea mink, Antarctic wolf, Carolina parakeet: all gone. Maybe you know that human proliferation on this planet, and our voracious consumption of resources, and our large-scale transformations of landscape, are causing a cataclysm of extinctions that bodes to be the worst such event since the fall of the dinosaurs. Maybe you are aware, with distant but genuine regret, of the destruction of tropical forests. Maybe you know that the mountain gorilla, the California condor, and the Florida panther are tottering on the threshold of extinction. Maybe you even know that the grizzly bear population of Yellowstone National Park faces a tenuous future. Maybe you stand among those well-informed people for whom the notion of catastrophic worldwide losses of biological diversity is a serious concern. Chances are, still, that you lack a few crucial pieces of the full picture.

Chances are that you haven't caught wind of these scientific murmurs about ecosystem decay. Chances are that you know little or nothing about a seemingly marginal field called island biogeography.

CONTENTS

I Thirty-Six Persian Throw Rugs

II The Man Who Knew Islands

III So Huge a Bignes

IV Rarity unto Death

V Preston's Bell

VI The Coming Thing

VII The Hedgehog of the Amazon

VII The Song of the Indri

IX World in Pieces

X Message from Aru

GLOSSARY

AUTHOR'S NOTE

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

SOURCE NOTES

BIBLIOGRAPHY

INDEX

First Chapter

Chapter 1

THIRTY-SIX PERSIAN THROW RUGS

Let's start indoors. Let's start by imagining a fine Persian carpet and a hunting knife. The carpet is twelve feet by eighteen, say. That gives us 216 square feet of continuous woven material. Is the knife razor-sharp? If not, we hone it. We set about cutting the carpet into thirty-six equal pieces, each one a rectangle, two feet by three. Never mind the hardwood floor. The severing fibers release small tweaky noises, like the muted yelps of outraged Persian weavers. Never mind the weavers. When we're finished cutting, we measure the individual pieces, total them up -- and find that, lo, there's still nearly 216 square feet of recognizably carpetlike stuff. But what does it amount to? Have we got thirty-six nice Persian throw rugs? No. All we're left with is three dozen ragged fragments, each one worthless and commencing to come apart.

Now take the same logic outdoors and it begins to explain why the tiger, Panthera tigris, has disappeared from the island of Bali. It casts light on the fact that the red fox, Vulpes vulpes, is missing from Bryce Canyon National Park. It suggests why the jaguar, the puma, and forty-five species of birds have been extirpated from a place called Barro Colorado Island -- and why myriad other creatures are mysteriously absent from myriad other sites. An ecosystem is a tapestry of species and relationships. Chop away a section, isolate that section, and there arises the problem of unraveling.

For the past thirty years, professional ecologists have been murmuring about the phenomenon of unraveling ecosystems. Many of these scientists have become mesmerized by thephenomenon and, increasingly with time, worried. They have tried to study it in the field, using mist nets and bird bands, box traps and radio collars, ketamine, methyl bromide, formalin, tweezers. They have tried to predict its course, using elaborate abstractions played out on their computers. A few have blanched at what they saw -- or thought they saw -- coming. They have disagreed with their colleagues about particulars, arguing fiercely in the scientific journals. Some have issued alarms, directed at governments or the general public, but those alarms have been broadly worded to spare nonscientific audiences the intricate, persuasive details. Others have rebutted the alarmism or, in some cases, issued converse alarms. Mainly these scientists have been talking to one another.

His metaphor is more scientific in tone than mine of the sliced-apart Persian carpet. What he means is that an ecosystem -- under certain specifiable conditions -- loses diversity the way a mass of uranium sheds neutrons. Plink, plink, plink, extinctions occur, steadily but without any evident cause. Species disappear. Whole categories of plants and animals vanish. What are the specifiable conditions? I'll describe them in the course of this book. I'll also lay siege to the illusion that ecosystem decay happens without cause.

Lovejoy's term is loaded with historical resonance. Think of radioactive decay back in the innocent early years of this century, before Hiroshima, before Alamogordo, before Hahn and Strassmann discovered nuclear fission. Radioactive decay, in those years, was just an intriguing phenomenon known to a handful of physicists -- the young Robert Oppenheimer, for one. Likewise, until recently, with ecosystem decay. While the scientists have murmured, the general public has heard almost nothing. Faunal collapse? Relaxation to equilibrium? Even well-informed people with some fondness for the natural world have remained unaware that any such dark new idea is forcing itself on the world.

Chances are that you haven't caught wind of these scientific murmurs about ecosystem decay. Chances are that you know little or nothing about a seemingly marginal field called island biogeography.

Reading Group Guide

Reading Group Discussion Points

Discuss the ways in which Quammen's The Song of the Dodo is part adventure story, part scientific study, part travelogue, part murder mystery, part history book, and part biography.
Comment on Quammen's writing style and his ability to impart difficult scientific material in both an interesting and understandable way.
Why do you think Quammen chose to use as his title figure the dodo bird, a large-headed, big-butted, lumbering, flightless bird? What does the dodo bird represent in the book? Why in particular did he choose to mention the song of the dodo? What resonance does this have?
Why do you think Quammen invests so much time dispelling the fictional stories of science, stories based more on convenience and tidiness than on the truth — such as Darwin being portrayed as the sole mind behind the theory of evolution, when in fact there was another man named Wallace who came upon it on his own?
The Tasmanian Aborigines were driven to the brink of extinction by the colonial settlers in the late 19th century. Compare their fate to the extinction of the dodo bird in the 1600s. Why is it so resonant? How is it haunting? What implications does it have for the human race?
Why is Quammen's book so powerful? In what ways did it change your view of the natural world? Did it in any way alter your perspective on your own life and on life itself? If so, how?
Near the end of The Song of the Dodo Quammen writes, "Yes, Simberloff predicts, the current cataclysm of extinctions is indeed likely to stand among the worst half-dozen such events in the history of life on Earth. This time around, we're the Death Star. But with a difference. Our own devastating impact on the biosphere will probably be a singular event, not part of a recurrent pattern. Why? Because we probably won't survive long enough, as a species, to find out." Do you believe the extinction of our species is, and always was, inevitable, or do you believe we have the ability to turn the tide and should, in fact, intercede on our planet's behalf?
What is conservation biology and how important does Quammen lead us to believe it is in the prevention of animal and plant extinction? Discuss the conservation biology work that is being done, and its rate of success. For example, review Carl Jones's work with the kestrel in Mauritius, and Lovejoy's experimental work in the Amazon.
At the end of The Song of the Dodo, Quammen returns to Aru to find the bird of paradise which Wallace had described so poignantly a century ago. "Even before we have reached the lekking tree on the second ridge" Quammen writes, "my question about Aru has been answered. The sad, dire things that have happened elsewhere in so many parts of the world ... haven't yet happened here. Probably they soon will. Meanwhile, though, there's still time. If time is hope, there's still hope." What, in the content of this paragraph, alters the ominous foreboding of The Song of the Dodo? Do you believe there is still hope? What do you think needs to be done in the time we have left?
Did reading this book make you want to help in some way to preserve our world? If so, what way or ways did you consider? Would it alter the way in which you live your life?
Did The Song of the Dodo spur you to travel, to find yourself on a boat chugging up some distant river to catch a glimpse of the indri or to hear the song of the cenderawasih? Where did it tempt you to go and what did you imagine you'd like to see?

Recommended Readings

Anthropologist on Mars, Oliver Sacks

Arctic Dreams, Barry Lopez

Broadsides from the Orders: A Book of Buys, Sue Hubbell

The Control of Nature, John McPhee

Dwellings: Reflections on the Natural World, Linda Hogan

Field Notes: The Grace Note of the Canyon Wren, Barry Lopez

The Last of the Tasmanians, David Davies

The Malay Archipeligo, Alfred Wallace

My Life: A Record of Events and Opinions: Vols. I and II, Alfred Wallace

The Ninemile Wolves, Rick Bass

The Origin of Species, Charles Darwin

The Voyage of the Beagle: Charles Darwin's Journal of Researches, Charles Darwin

Customer Reviews

Average Rating 4.5

( 10 )

Rating Distribution

5 Star

(7)

4 Star

(2)

3 Star

(0)

2 Star

(1)

1 Star

(0)

Your Rating:

Review Guidelines

Tell the world what you think of this product.

Add Recommendations

Your Name: Create a Pen Name or Leave Anonymously

Barnes & Noble.com Review Rules

Our reader reviews allow you to share your comments on titles you liked, or didn't, with others. By submitting an online review, you are representing to Barnes & Noble.com that all information contained in your review is original and accurate in all respects, and that the submission of such content by you and the posting of such content by Barnes & Noble.com does not and will not violate the rights of any third party. Please follow the rules below to help ensure that your review can be posted.

Reviews by Our Customers Under the Age of 13

We highly value and respect everyone's opinion concerning the titles we offer. However, we cannot allow persons under the age of 13 to have accounts at BN.com or to post customer reviews. Please see our Terms of Use for more details.

What to exclude from your review:

Please do not write about reviews, commentary, or information posted on the product page. If you see any errors in the information on the product page, please send us an email.

Reviews should not contain any of the following:

- HTML tags, profanity, obscenities, vulgarities, or comments that defame anyone
- Time-sensitive information such as tour dates, signings, lectures, etc.
- Single-word reviews. Other people will read your review to discover why you liked or didn't like the title. Be descriptive.
- Comments focusing on the author or that may ruin the ending for others
- Phone numbers, addresses, URLs
- Pricing and availability information or alternative ordering information
- Advertisements or commercial solicitation

Reminder:

- By submitting a review, you grant to Barnes & Noble.com and its sublicensees the royalty-free, perpetual, irrevocable right and license to use the review in accordance with the Barnes & Noble.com Terms of Use.
- Barnes & Noble.com reserves the right not to post any review -- particularly those that do not follow the terms and conditions of these Rules. Barnes & Noble.com also reserves the right to remove any review at any time without notice.
- See Terms of Use for other conditions and disclaimers.

AesculusOH

Posted September 11, 2009

I Also Recommend:

A book that changed my life!

I had never heard of Island Biogeography before reading this compelling and entertaining book. It opened my eyes to the incredible interconnectedness of all life on earth. The explanations of how colonization and subsequent speciation dictate the flora and fauna of an island was an epiphany. I've since read all the other books by David Quammen and have been enthralled by every one. Quammnen's style of writing is humorous but scientifically accurate. When I turned the last page of his book I exclaimed aloud "oh no!" I've since reread the book and found it just as riveting the second time around.

1 out of 1 people found this review helpful.
Was this review helpful? Yes NoThank you for your feedback. Report this reviewThank you, this review has been flagged.
Anonymous

Posted June 16, 2006

Read this darn book!

By far, one of the most engaging books I have ever read. A must read for any one interested in nature, islands, or evolution. Would highly recommend this book to any student of life sciences.

1 out of 1 people found this review helpful.
Was this review helpful? Yes NoThank you for your feedback. Report this reviewThank you, this review has been flagged.
Anonymous

Posted November 13, 2000

Earth's destruction

This book will explain to you how we as humans are responsible for the destruction of Earth. It reads like a compelling novel; unfortunately its not a tale of fiction.

1 out of 1 people found this review helpful.
Was this review helpful? Yes NoThank you for your feedback. Report this reviewThank you, this review has been flagged.
Anonymous

Posted January 16, 2000

An engaging read packed with easily understood information . . .

Quammen's book reads like a novel but is packed with enough information to rival most ecology texts. The difference between 'Song of the Dodo' and standard textbooks is that Quammen's book could easily be understood even by those without strong science backgrounds. In addition, the book is so engaging that the anxiety some experience when trying to 'memorize' new terms is completely avoided as new terms fall easily into usage. There are parts at which readers with strong backgrounds in ecological theory may be left a bit disappointed as Quammen avoids what he calls 'burdensome' equations (which are essential in some cases) and may abandon a thorough scientific explanation to keep things moving and hold readers' interests. All things considered, though, the faults with this book are few. It's a fascinating and worthwhile read.

1 out of 1 people found this review helpful.
Was this review helpful? Yes NoThank you for your feedback. Report this reviewThank you, this review has been flagged.
Anonymous

Posted November 18, 2005

good intention but...

despite some misguided and unsubstantiated 'facts' put forth to the readers, this book mandates so little use of brain cells that it actually hurts the brain - a way of entropy perhaps.
Was this review helpful? Yes NoThank you for your feedback. Report this reviewThank you, this review has been flagged.
Anonymous

Posted February 21, 2012

No text was provided for this review.
Anonymous

Posted August 25, 2011

No text was provided for this review.
Anonymous

Posted May 16, 2011

No text was provided for this review.
Anonymous

Posted June 3, 2011

No text was provided for this review.
Anonymous

Posted July 6, 2010

No text was provided for this review.

If you find inappropriate content, please report it to Barnes & Noble