What do you think?
Rate this book
Wild Ones: A Sometimes Dismaying, Weirdly Reassuring Story About Looking at People Looking at Animals in America
Journalist Jon Mooallem has watched his little daughter’s world overflow with animals butterfly pajamas, appliquéd owls—while the actual world she’s inheriting slides into a great storm of extinction. Half of all species could disappear by the end of the century, and scientists now concede that most of America’s endangered animals will survive only if conservationists keep rigging the world around them in their favor. So Mooallem ventures into the field, often taking his daughter with him, to move beyond childlike fascination and make those creatures feel more real. Wild Ones is a tour through our environmental moment and the eccentric cultural history of people and wild animals in America that inflects it—from Thomas Jefferson’s celebrations of early abundance to the turn-of the-last-century origins of the teddy bear to the whale-loving hippies of the 1970s. In America, Wild Ones discovers, wildlife has always inhabited the terrain of our imagination as much as the actual land.
The journey is framed by the stories of three modern-day endangered species: the polar bear, victimized by climate change and ogled by tourists outside a remote northern town; the little-known Lange’s metalmark butterfly, foundering on a shred of industrialized land near San Francisco; and the whooping crane as it’s led on a months-long migration by costumed men in ultralight airplanes. The wilderness that Wild Ones navigates is a scrappy, disorderly place where amateur conservationists do grueling, sometimes preposterous-looking work; where a marketer maneuvers to control the polar bear’s image while Martha Stewart turns up to film those beasts for her show on the Hallmark Channel. Our most comforting ideas about nature unravel. In their place, Mooallem forges a new and affirming vision of the human animal and the wild ones as kindred creatures on an imperfect planet.
With propulsive curiosity and searing wit, and without the easy moralizing and nature worship of environmental journalism’s older guard, Wild Ones merges reportage, science, and history into a humane and endearing meditation on what it means to live in, and bring a life into, a broken world.
The journey is framed by the stories of three modern-day endangered species: the polar bear, victimized by climate change and ogled by tourists outside a remote northern town; the little-known Lange’s metalmark butterfly, foundering on a shred of industrialized land near San Francisco; and the whooping crane as it’s led on a months-long migration by costumed men in ultralight airplanes. The wilderness that Wild Ones navigates is a scrappy, disorderly place where amateur conservationists do grueling, sometimes preposterous-looking work; where a marketer maneuvers to control the polar bear’s image while Martha Stewart turns up to film those beasts for her show on the Hallmark Channel. Our most comforting ideas about nature unravel. In their place, Mooallem forges a new and affirming vision of the human animal and the wild ones as kindred creatures on an imperfect planet.
With propulsive curiosity and searing wit, and without the easy moralizing and nature worship of environmental journalism’s older guard, Wild Ones merges reportage, science, and history into a humane and endearing meditation on what it means to live in, and bring a life into, a broken world.
353 pages, Kindle Edition
First published May 16, 2013
126 people are currently reading
5998 people want to read
About the author
Jon Mooallem
9 books164 followersJon Mooallem is a longtime writer at large for The New York Times Magazine and a contributor to numerous radio shows and other magazines, including This American Life and Wired. He has spoken at TED and collaborated with members of the Decemberists on musical storytelling projects.
His latest book, THIS IS CHANCE!, about the Great Alaska Earthquake of 1964 and radio reporter Genie Chance, will be published in March, 2020. His first book, Wild Ones, was chosen as a notable book of the year by The New York Times Book Review, The New Yorker, NPR’s Science Friday, and Canada’s National Post, among others.
He lives on Bainbridge Island, outside Seattle, with his family.
His latest book, THIS IS CHANCE!, about the Great Alaska Earthquake of 1964 and radio reporter Genie Chance, will be published in March, 2020. His first book, Wild Ones, was chosen as a notable book of the year by The New York Times Book Review, The New Yorker, NPR’s Science Friday, and Canada’s National Post, among others.
He lives on Bainbridge Island, outside Seattle, with his family.
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 30 of 286 reviews
August 13, 2013
I have loved Jon Mooallem's work whenever I came across it in the New York Times Magazine, so I went into this book expecting to like it, but instead I was blown away.
He takes a simple premise - what does animal conservation mean and why do we do it? - and turns it into a profound look at humankind's place in the natural world, what we do to try to "save" threatened, endangered, and nearly extinct species, and why bother?
In addition to being rich with insight and engagingly written, it's clear that Mooallem has spent an inordinate amount of time thinking about issues related to ecosystem, ecology, biodiversity, and society, and it shows throughout the book.
This quote struck me as a fine synopsis of the majesty of "Wild Ones":
Page 197: "By the late 1940s, there were only about thirty whooping cranes left on Earth, and, for better or worse, America was about to level the clobbering weight of its attention on two of them."
If you love animals, or love someone who loves animals, or are concerned about the state of the global environment and humanity's effect on it, or ever appreciate a polar bear in a Coca-Cola ad, this book is worth a read.
He takes a simple premise - what does animal conservation mean and why do we do it? - and turns it into a profound look at humankind's place in the natural world, what we do to try to "save" threatened, endangered, and nearly extinct species, and why bother?
In addition to being rich with insight and engagingly written, it's clear that Mooallem has spent an inordinate amount of time thinking about issues related to ecosystem, ecology, biodiversity, and society, and it shows throughout the book.
This quote struck me as a fine synopsis of the majesty of "Wild Ones":
Page 197: "By the late 1940s, there were only about thirty whooping cranes left on Earth, and, for better or worse, America was about to level the clobbering weight of its attention on two of them."
If you love animals, or love someone who loves animals, or are concerned about the state of the global environment and humanity's effect on it, or ever appreciate a polar bear in a Coca-Cola ad, this book is worth a read.
January 23, 2015
I liked the premise of this work, unfortunately I did not much enjoy the execution. Had the author been a biologist I believe it would have been more successful, though being a biologist should not have been required for the topic. Unfortunately the author's tone leaned too often towards flippancy, especially towards species we share the planet with and conservation in general. This is why I think a biologist/conservationist would have been best as they would have had a broader view on ecosystems and the nonhuman animal world as a whole.
There was also simply too much unnecessary information overall. The author included lengthy paragraphs about what his daughter would be wearing and reading, for instance. The author also enjoyed listing items that had animal imagery on them (such as children's PJs, stuffed animals etc.) fairly often and at length. I think it is safe to say most people have seen these items, you do not need to list these things.
Overall the author showed a lack of respect for species on this planet. He makes obnoxious comments like butterflies all looking the same like everything tastes like chicken (irritating to me on a number of levels). He came across wholly flippant when it came to polar bears and their conservation, he seems to be wholly ignorant or uncaring towards the entire scenario of polar bears.
On the whole, the author displays a flippant attitude towards species being protected and/or saved. He clearly lacks an ecological viewpoint and he continually doubts the importance of species roles. Sadly even someone who sought to write a book on this topic did not feel the need to fully understand how integrated and important individual species are to the planet as a whole. I found the ignorance appalling and irritating.
There was also simply too much unnecessary information overall. The author included lengthy paragraphs about what his daughter would be wearing and reading, for instance. The author also enjoyed listing items that had animal imagery on them (such as children's PJs, stuffed animals etc.) fairly often and at length. I think it is safe to say most people have seen these items, you do not need to list these things.
Overall the author showed a lack of respect for species on this planet. He makes obnoxious comments like butterflies all looking the same like everything tastes like chicken (irritating to me on a number of levels). He came across wholly flippant when it came to polar bears and their conservation, he seems to be wholly ignorant or uncaring towards the entire scenario of polar bears.
On the whole, the author displays a flippant attitude towards species being protected and/or saved. He clearly lacks an ecological viewpoint and he continually doubts the importance of species roles. Sadly even someone who sought to write a book on this topic did not feel the need to fully understand how integrated and important individual species are to the planet as a whole. I found the ignorance appalling and irritating.
October 24, 2014
One of my favorite zoo memories is watching a giant panda, surrounded by a veritable paparazzi of viewers at the Washington DC zoo, stand up and scratch its ass on a log. The subtitle to Wild Ones is, "A sometimes dismaying, weirdly reassuring story about looking at people looking at animals in America." I figured it would be full of moments like this: animals reflecting our own humanity, or maybe our own animal nature, back at us.
Wild Ones turned out to be this and more. Mooallem is not satisfied with anecdotes about pandas scratching. Instead, he asks, why do we care about the panda? Why do we attempt to preserve other species at all? And what does this effort, which is largely doomed, say about us? He focuses on three species as focal points for this issue: the polar bear, the Lange's Metalmark butterfly, and the whooping crane.
Each section is packed with Gladwell-esque insights and fascinating characters. At times I was moved by the lengths humans are already going to in order to conserve our wildlife, and at time saddened by the bleak outlook of this endeavor. The wonderful thing about Mooallem's book is that he too rides these emotional waves; throughout Wild Ones we get to watch him unpack his feelings about conservation. He brings his young daughter along for some of his trips, and, after a deep dive into the preservation of a specific animal, always loops back to the bigger picture. Yes, it is admirable that people dress up in white crane costumes and teach cranes their migration route via ultralight airplane, but isn't it really strange?
It is passages like this one, about Mooallem's daughter growing up and losing her own animal nature, that make Wild Ones more than just a book about animals:
"Isla was becoming one of us, but she was losing something, too. Maybe it was only some false authenticity that I'd projected onto her. But every hint of its disappearance still bummed me out.
This is what was behind my urge to show Isla these animals in the first place, I realized. She'd come into the world as an animal. I watched it happen - it was magnificently, bloodily biological. I wanted to keep her feeling like a part of that expansive natural world, and not just our self-contained human one. For me, wildlife has always been a reminder of all the mystery that exists outside my own experience - out there, beyond the suburban rec room I felt trapped in as a kid, watching Wild America on PBS. There's a special amazement that comes from watching a grizzly smack a salmon out of a river, or even from seeing just how hideous certain bottoms-dwelling fish look. It enlarges your sense of the world, the way looking out from the top of a tall hill does."
Ultimately, Mooallem doesn't come up with some magical solution or answer to the problem of conservation. But he takes heart in the efforts of others. As he says in the notes, the book's motto might as well be what one butterfly conservationist says to him in a moment of exasperation: "I just want to be part of a generation that tries."
Wild Ones turned out to be this and more. Mooallem is not satisfied with anecdotes about pandas scratching. Instead, he asks, why do we care about the panda? Why do we attempt to preserve other species at all? And what does this effort, which is largely doomed, say about us? He focuses on three species as focal points for this issue: the polar bear, the Lange's Metalmark butterfly, and the whooping crane.
Each section is packed with Gladwell-esque insights and fascinating characters. At times I was moved by the lengths humans are already going to in order to conserve our wildlife, and at time saddened by the bleak outlook of this endeavor. The wonderful thing about Mooallem's book is that he too rides these emotional waves; throughout Wild Ones we get to watch him unpack his feelings about conservation. He brings his young daughter along for some of his trips, and, after a deep dive into the preservation of a specific animal, always loops back to the bigger picture. Yes, it is admirable that people dress up in white crane costumes and teach cranes their migration route via ultralight airplane, but isn't it really strange?
It is passages like this one, about Mooallem's daughter growing up and losing her own animal nature, that make Wild Ones more than just a book about animals:
"Isla was becoming one of us, but she was losing something, too. Maybe it was only some false authenticity that I'd projected onto her. But every hint of its disappearance still bummed me out.
This is what was behind my urge to show Isla these animals in the first place, I realized. She'd come into the world as an animal. I watched it happen - it was magnificently, bloodily biological. I wanted to keep her feeling like a part of that expansive natural world, and not just our self-contained human one. For me, wildlife has always been a reminder of all the mystery that exists outside my own experience - out there, beyond the suburban rec room I felt trapped in as a kid, watching Wild America on PBS. There's a special amazement that comes from watching a grizzly smack a salmon out of a river, or even from seeing just how hideous certain bottoms-dwelling fish look. It enlarges your sense of the world, the way looking out from the top of a tall hill does."
Ultimately, Mooallem doesn't come up with some magical solution or answer to the problem of conservation. But he takes heart in the efforts of others. As he says in the notes, the book's motto might as well be what one butterfly conservationist says to him in a moment of exasperation: "I just want to be part of a generation that tries."
March 17, 2017
Here's how I became smitten with Jon Mooallem and Wild Ones, and you can too:
1. Listen to a recording of him telling stories from the book with musical accompaniment by Black Prairie on the podcast 99 Percent Invisible. (http://99percentinvisible.org/episode...) Then over-share it with friends.
2. Read his fascinating article about Neanderthals in the NY Times magazine, which also includes a paradigmatic example of mansplaining, and fall in love with his writing style. (https://mobile.nytimes.com/2017/01/11...) Then request Wild Ones at the library.
3. Read Wild Ones for a thought provoking narrative about what conservation means, why we do it, how we valiantly and ridiculously work to keep species alive, why it still matters, and what both sides of specific debates look like. You'll read about Thomas Jefferson's ego, the unlikely first director of the National and Bronx zoos, the creator of Pokemon, and the woman who talked to corporate boards about the sensuality of whales. It's as much a book about human animals as the endangered ones they're trying to save.
You'll find yourself telling everyone about it, especially your mom. Though as you hike with her through lovely hilly parks in rural Ohio, you'll be keenly aware that, despite your shifted baselines, these places are weirdly devoid of fauna (at least in winter with you talking and the dog running ahead on his leash).
Note: there are many other great NY Times magazine articles by Mooallem in case you're feeling a void in your life after finishing the book.
1. Listen to a recording of him telling stories from the book with musical accompaniment by Black Prairie on the podcast 99 Percent Invisible. (http://99percentinvisible.org/episode...) Then over-share it with friends.
2. Read his fascinating article about Neanderthals in the NY Times magazine, which also includes a paradigmatic example of mansplaining, and fall in love with his writing style. (https://mobile.nytimes.com/2017/01/11...) Then request Wild Ones at the library.
3. Read Wild Ones for a thought provoking narrative about what conservation means, why we do it, how we valiantly and ridiculously work to keep species alive, why it still matters, and what both sides of specific debates look like. You'll read about Thomas Jefferson's ego, the unlikely first director of the National and Bronx zoos, the creator of Pokemon, and the woman who talked to corporate boards about the sensuality of whales. It's as much a book about human animals as the endangered ones they're trying to save.
You'll find yourself telling everyone about it, especially your mom. Though as you hike with her through lovely hilly parks in rural Ohio, you'll be keenly aware that, despite your shifted baselines, these places are weirdly devoid of fauna (at least in winter with you talking and the dog running ahead on his leash).
Note: there are many other great NY Times magazine articles by Mooallem in case you're feeling a void in your life after finishing the book.
August 4, 2014
Meh. This book was alright, and had some interesting examples of conservation, but it didn't bring any new ideas to the table. It's a good introduction to mass extinction and endangered species conservation if one isn't familiar with them, and I appreciated the historical references to early conservation efforts and lack thereof in the US. The author finds himself at a loss with how to deal with the emotions associated with mass extinction caused by humanity, and I would point him towards Joanna Macy and Derrick Jensen to be able to sit with and process these emotions and move forward in a constructive way.
February 5, 2019
This book could have been much more detailed and interesting. The premise is a good one. The execution failed. If you decide to read this one, do yourself a favor and skip the whale chapter. Blech.
May 1, 2013
Wild Ones takes a close-up look at the effort to save three wild species that are on the verge of extinction -- the polar bear, a Bay Area butterfly, and the whooping crane. Jon Mooallem travels to polar Canada and along the whooping crane migration path to find out how conservationists are keeping them from disappearing completely. He interviews dozens of scientists and volunteers. He does some research and tells interesting stories about early American conservationists.
However -- this is not a happy tale. Mooallem finds many of those conservationists (and a fair number of former conservationists) are pessimistic about saving any species. Time after time, he questions the purpose of such time-consuming and expensive efforts that rarely have the desired outcome. After a while, it starts to seem rather subversive. Maybe we should just give up, he seems to hint.
It's hard to get a grip on what Mooallem thinks the answer is -- in fact, you get the impression that maybe he's just trying to stir things up and get people thinking. In the end, he confesses he's finding the human side of this story more compelling than the effort to save wild species. It's a losing battle, trying to save threatened animals, but quite a few people make the effort anyway, just because it seems like a decent thing to do. Many of the people he talks to, scientists included, look at the wildlife in a kind of airy-fairy way, noble beasts that possess inherent wisdom or other qualities. It's a bit unsettling.
He also notes that people seem to be more inclined to help save photogenic animals like polar bears rather than slugs. He also observes that our relationship with wild animals has changed over time. Before President Theodore Roosevelt decided not to shoot a bear on a hunting trip, bears were generally considered dangerous and ferocious animals to be avoided. After the presidential pardon, the public started to see bears as cute and cuddly. And now, it's not just bears -- the vast majority of children's books now feature cute, anthropomorphized animals.
There are no heroes in Wild Ones. The conservationists squabble and disagree on how to proceed with saving a species. They quit and disappear. They wear weird outfits and spout odd theories. They succeed rarely and fail often. It's all very human and quite fascinating.
However -- this is not a happy tale. Mooallem finds many of those conservationists (and a fair number of former conservationists) are pessimistic about saving any species. Time after time, he questions the purpose of such time-consuming and expensive efforts that rarely have the desired outcome. After a while, it starts to seem rather subversive. Maybe we should just give up, he seems to hint.
It's hard to get a grip on what Mooallem thinks the answer is -- in fact, you get the impression that maybe he's just trying to stir things up and get people thinking. In the end, he confesses he's finding the human side of this story more compelling than the effort to save wild species. It's a losing battle, trying to save threatened animals, but quite a few people make the effort anyway, just because it seems like a decent thing to do. Many of the people he talks to, scientists included, look at the wildlife in a kind of airy-fairy way, noble beasts that possess inherent wisdom or other qualities. It's a bit unsettling.
He also notes that people seem to be more inclined to help save photogenic animals like polar bears rather than slugs. He also observes that our relationship with wild animals has changed over time. Before President Theodore Roosevelt decided not to shoot a bear on a hunting trip, bears were generally considered dangerous and ferocious animals to be avoided. After the presidential pardon, the public started to see bears as cute and cuddly. And now, it's not just bears -- the vast majority of children's books now feature cute, anthropomorphized animals.
There are no heroes in Wild Ones. The conservationists squabble and disagree on how to proceed with saving a species. They quit and disappear. They wear weird outfits and spout odd theories. They succeed rarely and fail often. It's all very human and quite fascinating.
May 8, 2018
I very much love this book. I used it in a class this year - and my students found it accessible. I found it the perfect launching pad to talk about the Anthropocene.
August 15, 2018
I really enjoyed Mooallem's essay on the hippo plan, so I thought I would check out his book. The topic is something I'm quite interested in, of course, at the intersection of how ideas of nature influence conservation and restoration practice and representations of nature in popular culture. I find it slightly unfortunate (though not surprising in retrospect) that this is more longform journalism than educational nonfiction, though he's pretty good at it and that isn't the worst thing in the world. It just ends up being a bit meandering and inconclusive, which is slightly annoying in a discussion of a topic you're already pretty familiar with. I'm not sure I would recommend this to anyone already steeped in the dialogue about and Anthropocene conservation and novel ecosystems and stuff.
Still, while a lot of the points he arrives at feel familiar, I didn't know many of the stories he tells to get there. And some of them are pretty interesting. I wasn't aware to what extent polar bear photography and tourism were concentrated in a single town. I hadn't heard the story of the whale who consistently tried to swim up the same California river, or the "species in a bucket" story, both of which seem like pretty influential episodes in environmental history. And the story of the Lange's Metalmark butterfly is interesting in many dimensions, genetically and ecologically, and I had never heard anything about it.
On the other hand, he makes a pretty serious mistake about possums. I don't know what editor or fact checker let that get through, but hopefully he has since issued a retraction. The idea that one of the cutest animals in North America is objectively ugly in a way that necessarily precludes people from changing their opinions about it in the same way they did about bears seems so blithely ignorant for a book like this that it's uncharitable to imagine it wasn't a joke.
Still, while a lot of the points he arrives at feel familiar, I didn't know many of the stories he tells to get there. And some of them are pretty interesting. I wasn't aware to what extent polar bear photography and tourism were concentrated in a single town. I hadn't heard the story of the whale who consistently tried to swim up the same California river, or the "species in a bucket" story, both of which seem like pretty influential episodes in environmental history. And the story of the Lange's Metalmark butterfly is interesting in many dimensions, genetically and ecologically, and I had never heard anything about it.
On the other hand, he makes a pretty serious mistake about possums. I don't know what editor or fact checker let that get through, but hopefully he has since issued a retraction. The idea that one of the cutest animals in North America is objectively ugly in a way that necessarily precludes people from changing their opinions about it in the same way they did about bears seems so blithely ignorant for a book like this that it's uncharitable to imagine it wasn't a joke.
February 10, 2024
A complicated look at what compels people to go to great lengths to protect endangered species. What are our goals for endangered animals? How important is it to give our children “wild” experiences, when we can anticipate their “wild” baseline to shift (negatively)? Is it possible to act, meaningfully, in a big picture way, or are our immediate little picture actions the only way to focus our energy? Is there a single conservationist out there who remains optimistic after a decade or two of work?
So I plant my native plants and hope for the best I guess…
So I plant my native plants and hope for the best I guess…
August 4, 2013
Disappointing, even deceptive. Mooallem is a capable writer and an even better reporter, but this book reads like a collection of repurposed magazine stories. It explores the contradictions and futilities in our ideas about wildlife and wildlife conservation. One of its points--that we live in a such a man-altered world that's tough to even say what's wild anymore--has been made elsewhere, and better. Worse, Mooallem cherry picks his examples of addled conservation efforts. And, sure, the ones he chooses--polar bears on Hudson Bay, a tiny population of butterflies in Calif. and whooping cranes--do look destined for failure. But what about all of the efforts that have succeeded, some spectacularly, like the bald eagle, alligators, the peregrine falcon, the gray wolf and several species of great whales? A more complete survey would've been a more honest one.
September 1, 2020
Mooallem captures the endless practical problems faced, and only sometimes overcome, by ordinary people who just can't give up on creatures at the edge of extinction. Where most of us wouldn't even notice if a local butterfly, frog, or a migrating crane goes extinct on Thursday, these people end up doing anything -- whatever it takes, even if their whole life goes down a rat hole, to stave off the final loss of one more link in the chain of life. The improvisation and doggedness are incredible. Given the realities of unrelenting expansion of humankind's footprint, the struggle will probably never end, unless it ends in failure. I've almost never seen a more touching tribute to love for other, non-human lives, no matter how hopeless the fight.
May 13, 2019
fascinating! mooallem examines humans' relationship to animals, especially wild & endangered species, and focuses on the efforts to save a bear, a butterfly, and a bird (specifically: polar bears, the lange's metalmark butterfly, & whooping cranes). the three animals fall along a spectrum of conservation reliance, with the continued existence of polar bears the least reliant on humans and whooping cranes the most (though all existence is contingent upon climate change, so humans still have a lot of power over the least conservation reliant species). mooallem really digs into the contradictions of conservation--the idea that the humans who disrupted animals' ecosystems are now responsible for keeping those animals alive--and does so in a way that balances a bleak outlook on the future with optimism in the collective power of individuals. i've been talking about this book constantly; highly recommend.
August 23, 2018
This took me a while to read. It could be a bit dry at times, but I thought his approach to conservation was interesting... the notion that we are fascinated by animals and esteem them while at the same time unknowingly (sometimes knowingly) destroy their chance of survival. The concept of a Shifting Baseline Syndrome (each generation meets an environment that is diminished from the generation before them, and knows that as their baseline) is very sad to me. It makes me wish, if only in my dreams, to swim in an ocean loaded with Sea Turtles some day. Before reading the book, I listened to a 99% Invisible podcast which featured the author reading excerpts set to the music of Black Prairie. If you’re not inclined to read the book, at least give the podcast a listen (about 24 minutes long). It’s pretty cool!
https://99percentinvisible.org/episod...
https://99percentinvisible.org/episod...
August 11, 2020
I really enjoyed this author's book, This Is Chance, so I thought I would give this a try and it is definitely worth reading.
The book just what the subtitle says, a "story about looking at people looking at animals..." The author focuses on three endangered species and explores various viewpoints related to our efforts to save them. His writing is unbiased; he presents information and leaves it up to the reader to ponder the complex issues related to conservation. It has certainly opened my eyes to the deeply complex relationship between humans with other living creatures.
"We are gardening the wilderness. The line between conservation and domestication has blurred."
The book just what the subtitle says, a "story about looking at people looking at animals..." The author focuses on three endangered species and explores various viewpoints related to our efforts to save them. His writing is unbiased; he presents information and leaves it up to the reader to ponder the complex issues related to conservation. It has certainly opened my eyes to the deeply complex relationship between humans with other living creatures.
"We are gardening the wilderness. The line between conservation and domestication has blurred."
June 16, 2017
This book turned out to be much more fun than anticipated. The entertainment and delight it evokes are lovely feelings to have when discussing the irreversible and catastrophic human toll on the wild planet. Through wildly human true tales, the author examines human conservation efforts with bears, butterflies, and birds. The carnival of marvels here distracts you from the sad truth, somehow in a fun way.
October 26, 2021
I bought this book because it sounded interesting, but I didn't know what to expect in terms of content or the quality of the writing. This. Was. Delightful. I feel edified and uplifted, and tbh the end in particular mirrors a conversation I had just this afternoon about the way to frame questions around climate change so as to combat the inevitable feeling of helplessness. Mooallem recognizes that only so much can be done, but he still believes that it's worth doing.
August 11, 2022
A very solid read exploring the history of conservation in America with a focus on the people and our relationship with animals. This is not some purely scientific work with any solutions on how to save any particular species or the environment and some moments can be downright disheartening. It also isn’t a book I’d recommend to many of my friends. However, the passion and hope in the people portrayed are extremely interesting and their motivation is empowering. It did feel like pacing could have been improved slightly and could have used slightly less detail on his daughter, but overall I learned so much and enjoyed how the author turned the lens around on the people behind conservation. I will forever tell everyone about Billy Possum.
September 1, 2024
insanely jealous of jon moallem as a writer. he’s an excellent storyteller and i love the unique premise of this book: a cultural history of america’s relationship to animals, as told by three case studies of conservation. such deep reporting; funny at times and deeply humane; a thoughtful person thinking on the page / guiding you through a series of adventures
October 17, 2021
This is not what I thought it was going to be, but still pretty interesting
January 9, 2017
This is not a bad book, but, in the end, I'm not sure it adds up to a productive meditation. A bit like the not-quite-wild cranes it follows, it seems lost within a contextual puzzle it can't quite get free of. In the end, I feel like I'm listening to a self-indulgent teenager who's over-dosed on Sartre and sugar-cereal. There are fantastically interesting moments. Mooallem's a good storyteller and follows ecologists and conservationists deep into their work... But by the end, I was pretty frustrated by a circularity and a kind of cheap philosophical evasion of meaning. Each time he begins to build an argument, he takes a bit of a bear swipe at any meaning that was trying to accumulate there. (Or, it's a bit like reading a 200 page nihilist meme with a polar bear who doesn't know if he's smoking a pipe or if he's an image of a polar bear smoking a pipe.)
Here is my very poor retelling of Wild Ones with some Frank O'Hara added in, because I thought it was a reasonable addition.
We are the dominating animal of a new era, the Holocene. An era totally defined by us because we are the worst kind of animal and the best kind of animal all wrapped up in one, and we are destroying the world.
Waaaaaaah! We've taken a beautiful planet and turned it into an outhouse! Biodiversity, how do I love you? Let me count the ways. But wait, counting is a human thing, so, I'm still seeing the destruction of nature through my own eyes, and since I am human, I don't even know what nature is. So maybe it's not destroyed?
Oh no! It is now very painful to be human because I see destruction and I am destruction, and cute animals are dying and I don't know how to stop them from dying, but also I've constructed all of my sentences out of human words which makes them suspect. I am human and therefore suspect. If only I could call on our collective and great powers of denial to make myself feel better. But denial is confusing and animals are cute. Cute animals!!!!! I love you!!!! Cuuuuute!!!! You are so photogenic. I will give you a sandwich and you will live. (I feel better already).
But wait, I'm idealizing animals and also the world. I mean, all animals shit, not just us. We are no different from animals. Who am I?
Oh god. I don't know who I am and I can only idealize an imagined past, an inaccurate picture influenced by my great short-sightedness, a poor amateur water color painted by someone who thinks nature is sweet. One must remember Frank O'Hara at times like these. "I have never clogged myself with the praises of pastoral life, nor with nostalgia for an innocent past of perverted acts in pastures." It's not like woolly mammoths wrote poetry.
Animals who can figure out how to live with humans, they're doing okay. Maybe we should stop trying to help animals that don't know how to shit on a New York apartment building or drive a bus. Anyway, the point is, we won't kill all the non-human animals. Only most of the non-human animals. And probably ourselves while we're at it. But who are we to say which animals should live or die? It's not like we're god. Though in a way we kind of are, because aren't we already deciding which animals should live or die? God we're fucking everything up. No! Wait! I'm idealizing the world again...I must go back to Frank O'Hara:
"Why should I share you? Why don’t you get rid of someone else for a change?
I am the least difficult of men. All I want is boundless love.
Even trees understand me! Good heavens, I lie under them, too, don’t I? I’m just like a pile of leaves.
However, I have never clogged myself with the praises of pastoral life, nor with nostalgia for an innocent past of perverted acts in pastures. No. One need never leave the confines of New York to get all the greenery one wishes—I can’t even enjoy a blade of grass unless I know there’s a subway handy, or a record store or some other sign that people do not totally regret life. It is more important to affirm the least sincere; the clouds get enough attention as it is and even they continue to pass. Do they know what they’re missing? Uh huh..."
Okay, where was I.
Biodiversity is important and our kids lives will probably suck worse than we can imagine because we're a bunch of moronic idiots, but also, we're only human. We're only animals. So how can we expect ourselves to step outside of ourselves into idealized versions of ourselves which never existed but which keep us both destroying and trying to 'save' everything in our midst?
Here's an important concept. Pay attention, because I'm only going to say it sixteen times. The main reason we can't imagine how bad everything will soon suck, and is kind of already sucking, is because we can't remember how much better things were in the previous generation. How many more animals there were a hundred years ago than there are now. (Though there were a few problems a hundred years ago, too. But that's neither here nor there.) We think now is the baseline and therefore now is normal, and anything that takes a turn for the worse, is the new abnormal. We don't realize that we've been taking turns for the worse for many generations. If the baseline we started with = two thousand years ago, there would be many fewer pigeons in New York but perhaps a wooly mammoth or two. Since we can't remember the days when there were woolly mammoths, we don't realize there are an excessive number of pigeons in New York. This generational forgetting is called "shifting baseline syndrome." (Some call it generational amnesia.) Once you realize your perception of what nature should be is based on a very tiny blip of mis-information, you begin to ask the question, at what point in history did the appropriate balance between human and other animals exist, and can we ever again approximate a manageable balance?
Probably not. So, let's consider the guy who created Pokemon because he really understands our human need for animal classification and Pokemon are cute and know how to live with humans and therefore they just might survive into the next decade. Oh, wait. Pokemon doesn't begin with the letter B and also they're not on the endangered species list.
Hmmm, what animals that begin with B are on the endangered species list? Bears (polar), butterflies (Lange's metalmark butterfly) and birds (cranes). (But I'd also like to mention a whale named Humphrey a few small fish in disappearing marshes, and pajamas with animal prints.)
Humans have dominated the earth's landscapes to such a degree, that our fingerprints are doing harm to the most "pristine" places. Grimy is the new pristine. But maybe grimy is the old pristine, too. Who the hell knows how things are really meant to be? What is wild anyway? Have we ever made a productive or sensible distinction between the human animal and other animals? Human habitats and other animal habitats? We're all wild after all, aren't we? Or we're none of us wild. We're just beings beinging. Okay, some of us have cell-phones and twitter accounts, which seems like it should somehow detract from our wildness, but look how we turn into wild and impatient gesticulators and communicators the second we have a gadget in our hands. And twittering is a bird sound. So we're kind of like birds. And birds are wild. (Except for maybe pigeons and geese? Well, it's not that they're not wild, but they've figured out how to utilize human landscapes, which makes them hard to exoticize and idealize. So it's a good thing they're not endangered. Because only those that can be exoticized, idealized, or considered cute will get sandwiches of the not-shit variety.) Though the way some of us tweet, it is an insult to 'wild' animals to make a comparison. Hashtag #notmyovertweetingpresident hashtag #polarbearpajamasforever hashtag #iswildevenwildanymore? #waswildeverwild? #existentialquicksandisreal
Since polar bears are cute, people want to save them. Or they think they want to save them. What they most want, is to think of themselves as not horrible people and to believe that humans have the capacity to not only destroy the world, but also to save a few polar bears. Conservationists know they need the support of people who like memes if they are going to be able to protect any wildlife. But most non-conservationists who want to save animals on the verge of extinction have a very simplistic and childish view of what it means to 'save' a species whose ecosystems are shifting and becoming unhabitable on a grand scale. It's not enough to give a polar bear a sandwich. (As you know from reading "When You Give A Polar Bear A Sandwich"). Particularly when we've already given them the biggest shit sandwich imaginable. Godzilla-sized shit sandwiches at e every turn. But, we can still feel okay about ourselves because when we make an effort to save animals who can't probably be saved, whatever it even means to be saved, we show that we care about something bigger than ourselves (or smaller and flutterier) and that we can sometimes cooperate with other people for a few minutes in an effort to keep cuteness alive. Until we get annoyed and throw each other into alligator pits. Isn't that nice? (And also, we saved those alligators!)
Now there are people who are trying to keep the extremely small whooping crane population from dying out. Maybe whooping cranes are big birds of a bygone era of bigger critters and they would have died out at some point anyway. Since the Europeans came to North America, the population of whooping cranes went from 10 or 20 thousand to, well, 10 or 20 by the mid 1900s. It's hard to say what that has to do with people, or what anything has to do with people, or how we can compare normal mass extinction to human-made mass extinction, though it is clear that humans are responsible for what may turn out to be the most profound mass extinction event the earth has seen.
Today, after much hard work by people who don't quite know why they're bothering, except it is a balm on their existential malaise, the number of whooping cranes in 'the wild' has risen a bit, but only because people are dressing as cranes and trying to teach cranes how to be cranes. If humans are teaching cranes how to be cranes, how do we know humans aren't teaching cranes how to be humans dressed as cranes? Or maybe cranes are teaching humans how to be cranes dressed as humans? Lately, I don't even know how to tell a crane and a human apart. Where does one thing end and another begin? I think if I wear some crane pajamas I'll feel better.
So, all in all it's looking pretty grim. But at least I've gotten to tell you about some interesting people and places where people haven't really succeeded in helping endangered species but they have put quite a bit of effort into trying. What's the difference? We're all going to die anyway, though maybe one or two of us will survive long enough to feel really bad about all the smog. If only Dr. Seuss had written a story about this.
Sometimes, when we are able to find a way to market wildlife as cute, vulnerable and endangered, thank you capitalism, we can hold an umbrella to the avalanche are simultaneously creating and keep a few bodies alive. In the mean time, pajamas are great and if you give a polar bear a sandwich, make sure to use organic mayonnaise.
THE END
Here is my very poor retelling of Wild Ones with some Frank O'Hara added in, because I thought it was a reasonable addition.
We are the dominating animal of a new era, the Holocene. An era totally defined by us because we are the worst kind of animal and the best kind of animal all wrapped up in one, and we are destroying the world.
Waaaaaaah! We've taken a beautiful planet and turned it into an outhouse! Biodiversity, how do I love you? Let me count the ways. But wait, counting is a human thing, so, I'm still seeing the destruction of nature through my own eyes, and since I am human, I don't even know what nature is. So maybe it's not destroyed?
Oh no! It is now very painful to be human because I see destruction and I am destruction, and cute animals are dying and I don't know how to stop them from dying, but also I've constructed all of my sentences out of human words which makes them suspect. I am human and therefore suspect. If only I could call on our collective and great powers of denial to make myself feel better. But denial is confusing and animals are cute. Cute animals!!!!! I love you!!!! Cuuuuute!!!! You are so photogenic. I will give you a sandwich and you will live. (I feel better already).
But wait, I'm idealizing animals and also the world. I mean, all animals shit, not just us. We are no different from animals. Who am I?
Oh god. I don't know who I am and I can only idealize an imagined past, an inaccurate picture influenced by my great short-sightedness, a poor amateur water color painted by someone who thinks nature is sweet. One must remember Frank O'Hara at times like these. "I have never clogged myself with the praises of pastoral life, nor with nostalgia for an innocent past of perverted acts in pastures." It's not like woolly mammoths wrote poetry.
Animals who can figure out how to live with humans, they're doing okay. Maybe we should stop trying to help animals that don't know how to shit on a New York apartment building or drive a bus. Anyway, the point is, we won't kill all the non-human animals. Only most of the non-human animals. And probably ourselves while we're at it. But who are we to say which animals should live or die? It's not like we're god. Though in a way we kind of are, because aren't we already deciding which animals should live or die? God we're fucking everything up. No! Wait! I'm idealizing the world again...I must go back to Frank O'Hara:
"Why should I share you? Why don’t you get rid of someone else for a change?
I am the least difficult of men. All I want is boundless love.
Even trees understand me! Good heavens, I lie under them, too, don’t I? I’m just like a pile of leaves.
However, I have never clogged myself with the praises of pastoral life, nor with nostalgia for an innocent past of perverted acts in pastures. No. One need never leave the confines of New York to get all the greenery one wishes—I can’t even enjoy a blade of grass unless I know there’s a subway handy, or a record store or some other sign that people do not totally regret life. It is more important to affirm the least sincere; the clouds get enough attention as it is and even they continue to pass. Do they know what they’re missing? Uh huh..."
Okay, where was I.
Biodiversity is important and our kids lives will probably suck worse than we can imagine because we're a bunch of moronic idiots, but also, we're only human. We're only animals. So how can we expect ourselves to step outside of ourselves into idealized versions of ourselves which never existed but which keep us both destroying and trying to 'save' everything in our midst?
Here's an important concept. Pay attention, because I'm only going to say it sixteen times. The main reason we can't imagine how bad everything will soon suck, and is kind of already sucking, is because we can't remember how much better things were in the previous generation. How many more animals there were a hundred years ago than there are now. (Though there were a few problems a hundred years ago, too. But that's neither here nor there.) We think now is the baseline and therefore now is normal, and anything that takes a turn for the worse, is the new abnormal. We don't realize that we've been taking turns for the worse for many generations. If the baseline we started with = two thousand years ago, there would be many fewer pigeons in New York but perhaps a wooly mammoth or two. Since we can't remember the days when there were woolly mammoths, we don't realize there are an excessive number of pigeons in New York. This generational forgetting is called "shifting baseline syndrome." (Some call it generational amnesia.) Once you realize your perception of what nature should be is based on a very tiny blip of mis-information, you begin to ask the question, at what point in history did the appropriate balance between human and other animals exist, and can we ever again approximate a manageable balance?
Probably not. So, let's consider the guy who created Pokemon because he really understands our human need for animal classification and Pokemon are cute and know how to live with humans and therefore they just might survive into the next decade. Oh, wait. Pokemon doesn't begin with the letter B and also they're not on the endangered species list.
Hmmm, what animals that begin with B are on the endangered species list? Bears (polar), butterflies (Lange's metalmark butterfly) and birds (cranes). (But I'd also like to mention a whale named Humphrey a few small fish in disappearing marshes, and pajamas with animal prints.)
Humans have dominated the earth's landscapes to such a degree, that our fingerprints are doing harm to the most "pristine" places. Grimy is the new pristine. But maybe grimy is the old pristine, too. Who the hell knows how things are really meant to be? What is wild anyway? Have we ever made a productive or sensible distinction between the human animal and other animals? Human habitats and other animal habitats? We're all wild after all, aren't we? Or we're none of us wild. We're just beings beinging. Okay, some of us have cell-phones and twitter accounts, which seems like it should somehow detract from our wildness, but look how we turn into wild and impatient gesticulators and communicators the second we have a gadget in our hands. And twittering is a bird sound. So we're kind of like birds. And birds are wild. (Except for maybe pigeons and geese? Well, it's not that they're not wild, but they've figured out how to utilize human landscapes, which makes them hard to exoticize and idealize. So it's a good thing they're not endangered. Because only those that can be exoticized, idealized, or considered cute will get sandwiches of the not-shit variety.) Though the way some of us tweet, it is an insult to 'wild' animals to make a comparison. Hashtag #notmyovertweetingpresident hashtag #polarbearpajamasforever hashtag #iswildevenwildanymore? #waswildeverwild? #existentialquicksandisreal
Since polar bears are cute, people want to save them. Or they think they want to save them. What they most want, is to think of themselves as not horrible people and to believe that humans have the capacity to not only destroy the world, but also to save a few polar bears. Conservationists know they need the support of people who like memes if they are going to be able to protect any wildlife. But most non-conservationists who want to save animals on the verge of extinction have a very simplistic and childish view of what it means to 'save' a species whose ecosystems are shifting and becoming unhabitable on a grand scale. It's not enough to give a polar bear a sandwich. (As you know from reading "When You Give A Polar Bear A Sandwich"). Particularly when we've already given them the biggest shit sandwich imaginable. Godzilla-sized shit sandwiches at e every turn. But, we can still feel okay about ourselves because when we make an effort to save animals who can't probably be saved, whatever it even means to be saved, we show that we care about something bigger than ourselves (or smaller and flutterier) and that we can sometimes cooperate with other people for a few minutes in an effort to keep cuteness alive. Until we get annoyed and throw each other into alligator pits. Isn't that nice? (And also, we saved those alligators!)
Now there are people who are trying to keep the extremely small whooping crane population from dying out. Maybe whooping cranes are big birds of a bygone era of bigger critters and they would have died out at some point anyway. Since the Europeans came to North America, the population of whooping cranes went from 10 or 20 thousand to, well, 10 or 20 by the mid 1900s. It's hard to say what that has to do with people, or what anything has to do with people, or how we can compare normal mass extinction to human-made mass extinction, though it is clear that humans are responsible for what may turn out to be the most profound mass extinction event the earth has seen.
Today, after much hard work by people who don't quite know why they're bothering, except it is a balm on their existential malaise, the number of whooping cranes in 'the wild' has risen a bit, but only because people are dressing as cranes and trying to teach cranes how to be cranes. If humans are teaching cranes how to be cranes, how do we know humans aren't teaching cranes how to be humans dressed as cranes? Or maybe cranes are teaching humans how to be cranes dressed as humans? Lately, I don't even know how to tell a crane and a human apart. Where does one thing end and another begin? I think if I wear some crane pajamas I'll feel better.
So, all in all it's looking pretty grim. But at least I've gotten to tell you about some interesting people and places where people haven't really succeeded in helping endangered species but they have put quite a bit of effort into trying. What's the difference? We're all going to die anyway, though maybe one or two of us will survive long enough to feel really bad about all the smog. If only Dr. Seuss had written a story about this.
Sometimes, when we are able to find a way to market wildlife as cute, vulnerable and endangered, thank you capitalism, we can hold an umbrella to the avalanche are simultaneously creating and keep a few bodies alive. In the mean time, pajamas are great and if you give a polar bear a sandwich, make sure to use organic mayonnaise.
THE END
February 3, 2022
Superbly researched and written but I didn’t feel as inspired or uplifted as many of the reviewers. The future for wild animals looks very bleak but it is definitely interesting and worthwhile to explore the history of humans muddling through their relationship with animals over American history. Mooallem poses lots of deep and difficult questions about what being wild really means and his book is full of unusual and amusing anecdotes. It is ultimately a story about very real imperfect people doing what they can - I guess that is inspiring in an imperfect world!
October 9, 2024
Pretty solid deep dive into the conservation of three distinctly charismatic species with some nice tangents throughout. A little bit dry.
June 26, 2018
Mooallem does a very good job covering the difficult questions that many of us who are involved in or care about conservation tend to ask ourselves. He doesn't try to offer up any pretty answers, which I felt was appropriate because there really are no easy or nice answers. If you care about conservation and want to learn some interesting history, this is a great book. It may leave you a little sad, but that is not the authors fault rather just a reflection of our changing planet and the many disheartening challenges we currently face to trying to preserve wildlife and wild places.
June 16, 2017
I love animals, and I know I’m not the only one. My oldest son is raising goats in our backyard, and every day, they attract visitors. I’ve watched it time and time again. Animals bring out the best in people: their joy, their kindness, and their sense of wonder.
This book is about how some conservationists have tapped into people’s love of animals and harnessed it not just to save endangered species but to preserve the much less adorable ecosystems in which they thrive. A clear and recent example of this is with polar bears, which are in danger of extinction due to global warming. Plenty of politicians deny global warming, and only a small portion of the voting public ever gets excited about it, but thousands if not millions of people will rally to save starving polar bears. Knowing that, conservationists were able to pressure for laws to be passed to do something about the bears’ natural habitat, the melting polar ice caps.
That’s not to say that saving the polar bears has been an overwhelming success. If anything, this book, which also covers butterfly extinction, the spectacular attempt to save the whooping crane, and a bit about the “save the whales” campaign, is full of failure. But the embittered activists involved in all these efforts are inspiring because in spite of all the setbacks they face, they just keep going. While reading the book, I’ve been involved in a very different cause, but the persistence of those environmental activists was particularly inspiring to me. As one of them said, human flaws created our current environmental disaster, but it’s got to be human beings with all our flaws to figure out how to clean up this mess. If we don’t all get cracking, we ourselves might go extinct.
I recommend this book to everyone on the planet. It would make for an Oscar-caliber documentary film, and I hope someone produces it because this is a message that needs to be spread far and wide. I’ll admit my mind wandered in the more scientific sections, and parts of it are downright scary, but the end had me cheering. Go out and get hold of a copy. Push your way through the hard parts. This is not just about solving the earth’s problems. The lessons here can be applied to any and every problem we humans face.
This book is about how some conservationists have tapped into people’s love of animals and harnessed it not just to save endangered species but to preserve the much less adorable ecosystems in which they thrive. A clear and recent example of this is with polar bears, which are in danger of extinction due to global warming. Plenty of politicians deny global warming, and only a small portion of the voting public ever gets excited about it, but thousands if not millions of people will rally to save starving polar bears. Knowing that, conservationists were able to pressure for laws to be passed to do something about the bears’ natural habitat, the melting polar ice caps.
That’s not to say that saving the polar bears has been an overwhelming success. If anything, this book, which also covers butterfly extinction, the spectacular attempt to save the whooping crane, and a bit about the “save the whales” campaign, is full of failure. But the embittered activists involved in all these efforts are inspiring because in spite of all the setbacks they face, they just keep going. While reading the book, I’ve been involved in a very different cause, but the persistence of those environmental activists was particularly inspiring to me. As one of them said, human flaws created our current environmental disaster, but it’s got to be human beings with all our flaws to figure out how to clean up this mess. If we don’t all get cracking, we ourselves might go extinct.
I recommend this book to everyone on the planet. It would make for an Oscar-caliber documentary film, and I hope someone produces it because this is a message that needs to be spread far and wide. I’ll admit my mind wandered in the more scientific sections, and parts of it are downright scary, but the end had me cheering. Go out and get hold of a copy. Push your way through the hard parts. This is not just about solving the earth’s problems. The lessons here can be applied to any and every problem we humans face.
November 5, 2013
One of the most enjoyable books I've read this year. Stories about conservation, humans and how we interact with all the other species on the planet.
The book is broadly structured in three parts, covering polar bears, butterflies (Lange's Metalmark) and the whooping crane. Mooallem looks at the ways in which people are involved in efforts to save these three species, often ending up telling us more about humans than the animals that are nominally his subject. He tells a hopeful tale, for the most part, and although his slightly saccharine ending wasn't really to my taste, it probably is correctly pitched for an American audience.
There were lots of scenes and images that have stuck with me since finishing the book, almost all moments of human folly in which the contradictions of being a human are expressed.
We don't understand the effects of our actions in the world, or when we think we do, we don't anticipate second and third-order consequences. It's not a new idea, but it was memorably told in this well-written book.
The book is broadly structured in three parts, covering polar bears, butterflies (Lange's Metalmark) and the whooping crane. Mooallem looks at the ways in which people are involved in efforts to save these three species, often ending up telling us more about humans than the animals that are nominally his subject. He tells a hopeful tale, for the most part, and although his slightly saccharine ending wasn't really to my taste, it probably is correctly pitched for an American audience.
There were lots of scenes and images that have stuck with me since finishing the book, almost all moments of human folly in which the contradictions of being a human are expressed.
We don't understand the effects of our actions in the world, or when we think we do, we don't anticipate second and third-order consequences. It's not a new idea, but it was memorably told in this well-written book.
July 2, 2013
How far should animal conservation efforts go? What if it's not a cute* polar bear, but an insect no bigger than your thumb? And what does conservation mean? What's the right amount of animals?
I took a lot of these questions for granted before, but this book raised them and took a few stabs at answering them. The "weirdly reassuring" part of the title was obviously added to keep this book from sounding like a total bring-down; I'm not sure I feel more reassured. And the parts with his daughter didn't work very well--maybe they should have been spun out into companion articles.
*I've been guilty of oohing and aahing over cute polar bears like Siku (he's on Facebook--check it out), but let's not forget that they are enormous killing machines. It's OK, they can be both. But the image change polar bears have experienced is well documented here.
I took a lot of these questions for granted before, but this book raised them and took a few stabs at answering them. The "weirdly reassuring" part of the title was obviously added to keep this book from sounding like a total bring-down; I'm not sure I feel more reassured. And the parts with his daughter didn't work very well--maybe they should have been spun out into companion articles.
*I've been guilty of oohing and aahing over cute polar bears like Siku (he's on Facebook--check it out), but let's not forget that they are enormous killing machines. It's OK, they can be both. But the image change polar bears have experienced is well documented here.
June 20, 2023
I have carried this book with me since I read it, I think about it so often and have recommended it to many friends. I love the different points of views that are sometimes challenging but through the excellent reporting, there is a lot of "agreeing to disagree." While there is no denying climate change scientifically, and this book absolutely confirms that, there is also no denying people's lived experiences. This book is all about the intersectionality of nature and humans - including the human inventions of conservationism, politicization, and socialization. This book has beautiful affirming moments of how essential and wonderful humanity can be, realistic and fascinating historical and scientific facts, and an overall theme that affirms the inseparability between our environments and ourselves.
May 21, 2014
I'm an ecologist and do some peripheral work with an endangered species, so I'm likely not the target audience of this book. I enjoyed the stories about the different conservationists and their projects, and I thought Mooallem's analysis was often quite good. The explanations of ecological concepts were well done. The language was both fluid and sharp-- easy to read, but precise. On the other hand, I thought the book could have been structured more solidly, both as a whole and within sections and chapters. Some chapters felt incomplete, and I found the book to feel almost like three separate long reports rather than one complete work. In the end, I'm glad I read the book despite its unedited quality, and I feel it brings positive attention to a complex and under-discussed topic.
Displaying 1 - 30 of 286 reviews