Wild Thoughts from Wild Places - by David Quammen (Paperback)

About the Book

A two-time winner of the "National Magazine" Award takes readers from the central Amazon to the streets of New York to explore scientific facts, ideas, and wonders.

Book Synopsis

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 introduces 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.

Readers learn of 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.

Review Quotes

"Quammen has a wide range of knowledge, an agile pen and a generous heart." --James Gorman, The New York Times Book Review

"So thrilling to read is science writer David Quammen's essay collection that you actually experience moments of believing you have been transported to some of the ferocious or fairy-tale-like locales he reports on. . . . Quammen is no ordinary writer. He is simply astonishing, one of that rare class of writer gifted with verve, ingenuity, humor, guts, and great heart." --Lisa Shea, Elle

About the Author

David Quammen has been awarded a Lannan Literary Award for nonfiction and an Academy Award in Literature from the American Academy of Arts and Letters for his novels, stories, and essays. He is a two-time winner of the National Magazine Award for science essays and other work in Outside magazine. He is the author of several books, including The Song of the Dodo. Quammen lives in Montana.