Author(s): David Quammen

Natural History and Environment

Great and terrible flesh-eating beasts have always shared the landscape with humans. Now, of course, as humans spread and despoil the planet, predators may only survive on the other side of glass barriers and chain-link fences. David Quammen is no armchair evolutionary theorist, and, in The Song of the Dodo, everything he writes about he has experienced first-hand. In this book he examines the fate of lions in India's Gir forest, saltwater crocodiles in northern Australia, brown bears in the mountains of Romania, and Siberian tigers. He is equally intrigued by the traditional relationship between the great predators and the people who live among them, and weaves into his story the fears and myths that have haunted humankind for millennia.