The Song of the Dodo: Island Biogeography in an Age of Extinction

Best science book I ever read. ( )

Desultory fluff: This is by far the most desultory, fluff-filled history of biological evolution that I've ever read. Generally, I am not a skimmer of Quammen's work, and in fact often enjoy his wit and lithesome prose, but after only a dozen pages or so into Dodo I found myself flipping page after page looking for something substantive, looking for meat. In one word, the pace is SLOW. Over and over again in the margins I found myself scribbling "Go! Go! We'd advanced this far thirty pages ago!" But on the plus side I suppose if you are looking for a book to practice your speed reading, Dodo may be it: you can flip ten pages at a throw and hardly miss a thing.

A thoroughly engrossing read, and I can't better what the previous reviewers have written. Quammen's own sense of adventure imbues the entire work.

One of the most abiding sections in my own mind (which haunts me in its implications) is his discussion of what I could term patchwork conservation, where bits and pieces of an ecosystem are preserved-laudable but misguided (although surely better than nothing).

It is wonderful to have such brilliant writers about evolution who take the time to enlighten all of us about the wondrous discoveries made possible now through DNA decoding. I'm looking forward to the continuing study of human migrations as a tale being unraveled through study of genomes around the world. The science is far beyond me--but what fascination.

Read [[Richard Dawkins]] [Ancestor's Tale] after you've read this. Two mighty tomes well worth the time! ( )

A remarkable book. It is long and discursive, illuminated by dialogues with scientists in the field and at work studying the data, with visits to islands of jungle among the deforested areas of Brazil and Madagascar, along with islands in the ocean. There are stories of the extinction of song birds on Guam, and Aboriginal people of Tasmania, along with the dodo. Quammen unfold the evolution of the theory of evolution from Darwin and Wallace into the study of speciation on islands, into the practical questions - how much undisturbed space does any species need to keep surviving and reproducing from generation to generation. ( )

I first read this book 10 years or so ago, and thought then it was one of the finest science books I ever read. It is still, with this reading, one of my favorites. Written in the form of an extended essay, it conveys not just the facts of science, but the emotion of it. Why do people do science, anyway? Quammen lets you see--and feel-- that for yourself. I wanted to read this book again as part of my exploration of evolutionary biology. Quammen's writing on Alfred Russell Wallace, the co-discovered of evolution with Charles Darwin, is extraordinary. But so is Quammen's gusto in throwing himself into situations where he can see first hand what our current state of knowledge is. Quammen's quirky essays in Outside magazine were what first attracted me to him. But this book is why I keep reading him. And, as a bonus, he was giving a lecture on campus and I got him to sign my copy. Now this book will be in my library forever. ( )