Bringing Back The Dodo: Lessons In Natural And Unnatural History

by Wayne Grady

A penetrating book on the very roots of our relationship with nature.

Bringing Back the Dodo is about how the forces of evolution and extinction have shaped the living world, and the part that humans play therein. This strikingly thought-provoking book, in the tradition of John McPhee and David Quammen, explores the very roots of our relationship with nature and challenges us to look at ourselves and the natural world around us in new light.

Wayne Grady searches our history and prehistory to explain why humans love nature and fear it at the same time. He explores the repercussions of our manipulations of nature through science, as exemplified by the Harvard Mouse, and suggests which extinct species we could clone (sadly, probably not the dodo), and whether we ought to try. He looks into the ramifications of getting up on our hind legs to walk, and what it meant to humankind when we lost our nocturnal vision. A visit to the supermarket leads him to uncover our vestigial longing for subtropical foods, and elsewhere he ponders how our instinct for “home” compares to that of other animals.

These elegant and penetrating essays, based on pieces originally published in Explore magazine, linger long in the imagination. They speak to some of our most fundamental questions about the human and animal worlds, and confirm Wayne Grady’s standing as one of our foremost literary science writers.

Genres: Science, Nonfiction, History, Nature, Environment

240 pages, Hardcover

First published March 28, 2006

About the author

Wayne Grady is the award-winning author of Emancipation Day, a novel of denial and identity. He has also written such works of science and nature as The Bone Museum, Bringing Back the Dodo, The Quiet Limit of the World, and The Great Lakes, which won a National Outdoor Book Award in the U.S. With his wife, novelist Merilyn Simonds, he co-authored Breakfast at the Exit Café: Travels Through America. And with David Suzuki he co-wrote the international bestseller Tree: A Life Story.

He has also translated fourteen works of fiction from the French, by such authors as Antonine Maillet, Yves Beauchemin, and Danny Laferrière. In 1989, he won the Governor General’s Award for his translation of Maillet’s On the Eighth Day. His most recent translation is of Louis Hamelin’s October 1970, published by House of Anansi Press in 2013.

Grady teaches creative writing in the optional-residency MFA program at the University of British Columbia. He and Merilyn Simonds live in the country north of Kingston, Ontario.

Reviews

[Shauna · Rating 3 out of 5]

Not exactly “Canada’s David Quammen,” but a good read nonetheless. Becoming a flaneur within natural history, Grady saunters and meanders through interesting stories and tidbits, often tying them together in thought-provoking ways, if sometimes missing the mark.

Beginning with human’s dietary choices reflecting our origins in the subtropics, the essays in this book mostly speak to our need of control: control of our diets, our environment, property, what animals should exist where and when…

I found his essays that incorporated personal anecdotes to be the most successful, especially the second to last, “Send in the Clones” (a profoundly depressing exploration of dogma, science, and technology) and the final essay which sees the author returning to a (somewhat ancestral) home.

This is a quick read full of interesting facts, entertaining stories, and some intensely philosophical questions.

[MIL]

其實高中之後除了科學人之外很少看科普書
譯者是中正哲學碩士
翻這種生命科學的書好奇怪
不過翻的很不錯
很喜歡這本書的文風
不看科學層面也是很棒的文章
也許這是譯者有人文訓練的優勢吧
至於生命科學方面
我生物一向很爛
不過看起來資料查的還挺用心的
應該沒什麼錯才是
翻譯就要翻成這樣看起來才舒服啊

[Amanda Borys · Rating 1 out of 5]

I found with this book that, the more I read, the less I was enjoying it. My opinion of the author was that he was someone who found himself clever, rather than being someone that actually was. He made odd connections between things and then amused himself with his own wit in describing them, even when some of his connections were clearly spurious and based more on the way things seem, rather than the way things are.

[Foggygirl · Rating 3 out of 5]

An interesting read.