"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 Ara 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."
~~back cover

The piece that really struck me and stayed with me is Before the Fall, which begins with an infestation of tent caterpillars -- an outbreak and crash event. "It's characteristic of certain types of animal but not others, Lemmings undergo outbreaks; river otters don't. Some species of grasshoppers do, some species of mouse, some species of starfish, whereas other species among the same taxonomic groups don't. An outbreak of woodpeckers is unlikely. An outbreak of wolverines, unlikely. Among those insect species inhabiting forests, ... only one percent ever experience outbreaks."

He goes on to point out that "the most serious outbreak on the planet earth is that of the species Homo sapiens. ... we've increased our population by a factor of five hundred since the invention of agriculture, by a factor of five since the Industrial Revolution, by more than double within only the last century -- and that there seem to be no natural limits in sight. Relative to other large-bodied mammals, we're a grossly abundant species in the throes of an exceptional, and seemingly unsustainable, episode of proliferation and consumption."

"This is a question, not an assertion: Is Homo sapiens an outbreak population, just reaching the peak of its curve? ... And if we are presently experiencing an outbreak, what does science warn us to expect?" What will the crash look like? ( )

For the past two decades, David Quammen has followed winding trails and fresh lines of thought through the world's outback. This book is a collection of twenty-three of Quammen's most intriguing, most exciting, most memorable pieces. In it you will meet seasoned professional 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. You will be introduced to the commerce in pearls (and black-market parrots) in the Aru Islands of eastern Indonesia and taken ambivalently along on a lion-hunting excursion through the mountains of Montana. At the Cincinnati Zoo, there is a lesson to be learned about the ugly truth behind those beautiful white tigers, and the celebration of a fiftieth wedding anniversary serves as occasion for pondering Einstein's ideas on the relativity

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. ( )

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. ( )

Simply the best natural history essayist around today. ( )