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"After years of crossing borders to see new birds and new landscapes, Peter Cashwell's exploration of lines between states, between time zones, and between species led him to consider the lines that divide genders, seasons, musical genres, and just about every other aspect of human life. His conclusion: most had something in common--they were largely imaginary. Nonetheless, this tour of the tangled world of delineation attempts to address how we distinguish right from wrong, life from death, Democrat from Republican--and how the lines between came to be. Part storyteller, part educator, and part smartass, Cashwell is unafraid to take readers off the beaten path--to the desert vistas of the Four Corners, a quiet breakfast among the redwoods, or a pumping station in Cleveland: something amusing and/or educational awaits at every stop. And he's not alone: the tricks and treats of the human instinct for drawing lines are revealed in interviews with experts of all sorts. Learn about the use of the panel border from a Hugo Award-winning comics creator. Trace the edge of extinction with the rediscoverer of the Ivory-billed Woodpecker. Get the truth about the strike zone from an umpire with a physics degree"--… (more)
User reviews
It's an intriguing thought. For better or for worse, our nature is to divide ourselves.
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I don't normally pretend to be objective about books, but on this occasion I'm even less so: the author is an old friend and I'm married to one of the experts mentioned here
Cashwell writes most like Bill Bryson, if Bryson was an English teacher with the hobby of birding. The unifying theme here is lines that people draw to separate things, but how there's always ambiguity, whether between what we mean by male and female, or at the edge of extinction, or in the definition of species, or between genres. Really, he's interested in pretty much everything including driving, and art, and music. Even if, like me, you're not interested in spotting birds out in the middle of nowhere at dawn, you'll enjoy the book because it's entertaining and discursive and amusing. We've all read it at our house, or are planning to, now that a copy isn't being read by someone else.
Personal copy