Wild thoughts from wild places

by David Quammen

Book, 1969

Status

Available

Call number

508

Genres

Collection

Your library

Publication

Publisher Unknown (1969)

Description

In Wild Thoughts from Wild Places, award-winning journalist David Quammen reminds us why he has become one of our most beloved science and nature writers. This collection of twenty-three of Quammen's most intriguing, most exciting, most memorable pieces takes us to meet kayakers on the Futaleufu River of southern Chile, where Quammen describes how it feels to travel in fast company and flail for survival in the river's maw. We are introduced to the commerce in pearls (and black-market parrots) in the Aru Islands of eastern Indonesia. Quammen even finds wildness in smog-choked Los Angeles -- embodied in an elusive population of urban coyotes, too stubborn and too clever to surrender to the sprawl of civilization. With humor and intelligence, David Quammen's Wild Thoughts from Wild Places also reminds us that humans are just one of the many species on earth with motivations, goals, quirks, and eccentricities. Expect to be entertained and moved on this journey through the wilds of science and nature.… (more)

User reviews

LibraryThing member breic2

I read most of the stories in this collection, but found they got duller toward the end. A typical example is: he goes into the mountains north of Los Angeles one morning looking for coyotes. He doesn't see any coyotes but he does find a coyote skull. Trigger epiphany and end of story. He did put

more effort into some of the earlier stories, though, so it is worth browsing through.

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LibraryThing member JNSelko

Simply the best natural history essayist around today.

LibraryThing member bluepigeon

Quammen writes very short, often interesting essays in this book, but I found his all-American childhood, stories of his visits to the Cincinnati Zoo, the history of the old family house more captivating than the writing that directly concerns nature and wild things. Sure, I learned some

interesting tidbits of information about the coyotes of Los Angeles, and mountains lion hunting, but it all seemed too superficial. Some of the points he makes about the bioethics of zoos, ethics of hunting, and the role of the human in changing/destroying/trying to fix its environment are well-put, but again, nothing new or revolutionary here. In fact, some essays seem more like summaries of what such-and-such expert said in this book and so-and-so believes than Quammen contributing anything new to the question at hand. So for a good intro to many bioethical arguments and interesting nature factoids, this is a great book. For someone like me, it may be too light.

Quammen's writing style is journalistic for sure, but I found that I wanted more humor, more a sense of direction, which he does not provide. I wanted a bit of Bryson or even Chatwin in there. Some of the articles certainly get lively with rather testy ethical issues, like the one about mountain lion hunting, so that was fun.

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LibraryThing member Sean191

The writing was fine....the topics should have been exciting, but they were also somehow, just fine...

I guess that's why I'm rating this pretty low. The subject matter - crazy white river rafting, some serious treks...should have been more exciting than they came across as. Quammen is a good

writer, I can't really find fault, but I don't think the stories aged well and at least for me, the tone didn't hit right. That's not to say others won't love this book (I see plenty of high ratings) but it just wasn't for me.

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