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Vesper flights : new and collected essays

by Macdonald, Helen, 1970-

Format: Print Book 2020
Availability: Available at 27 Libraries 46 of 79 copies

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Andrew Bayne Memorial Library Nonfiction 824.92 MACD
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Northland Public Library Nonfiction 508 M14
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Summary
Animals don't exist in order to teach us things, but that is what they have always done, and most of what they teach us is what we think we know about ourselves.

In Vesper Flights Helen Macdonald brings together a collection of her best loved essays, along with new pieces on topics ranging from nostalgia for a vanishing countryside to the tribulations of farming ostriches to her own private vespers while trying to fall asleep.

Meditating on notions of captivity and freedom, immigration and flight, Helen invites us into her most intimate experiences: observing the massive migration of songbirds from the top of the Empire State Building, watching tens of thousands of cranes in Hungary, seeking the last golden orioles in Suffolk's poplar forests. She writes with heart-tugging clarity about wild boar, swifts, mushroom hunting, migraines, the strangeness of birds' nests, and the unexpected guidance and comfort we find when watching wildlife.

By one of this century's most important and insightful nature writers, Vesper Flights is a captivating and foundational book about observation, fascination, time, memory, love and loss and how we make sense of the world around us.

Published Reviews
Booklist Review: "ldquo;Swifts are magical," writes "bird-obsessed" Macdonald, author of the beloved H Is for Hawk (2015). They ascend at twilight in what are called vesper flights, attaining soaring altitudes high enough to enable them to forecast the weather, orient themselves, and determine "what they should do next." A collective approach such as this, Macdonald suggests, is crucial for our own species as we face the start of a "planetary ecological breakdown." What we can and must learn from nature is the prevailing theme throughout this collection's 41 essays, each gorgeously composed, complexly affecting, and stunningly revelatory. Macdonald is both exacting and enthralled as she describes glowworms, hares, ants, swans, migrating birds seen at night from the top of the Empire State Building, the paradoxes of nature reserves, tree disease, storms, the lessons in denial and prediction embedded in migraines, how wild mushrooms signal a hidden larger whole, and the shock felt by every living entity during a total solar eclipse. Macdonald offers a glimpse into her unusual childhood, and accompanies intrepid astrobiologist Nathalie Cabrol on expeditions to dangerous places to study life's phenomenal adaptation to extremes. There is abundant wonder and beauty here, but they are shadowed by concern and grief because the north to which Macdonald's compass points is climate change and its ravaging of life's intricate web, from the monumental to the microbial.HIGH-DEMAND BACKSTORY: Best-selling Macdonald's fans will rush to embrace this, as should all readers passionate about nature."
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Publisher's Weekly Review: "English naturalist Macdonald (H Is for Hawk) offers meditations on the natural world and its inhabitants in an inviting collection of 41 new and previously published essays that are infused with wonder, nostalgia, and melancholy. Macdonald ruminates on the pleasures of watching animals in "Wicken," and recalls encounters with fierce creatures in "Nothing Like a Pig," about wild boars, and in "Hares," about boxing hares--"magical harbingers of spring" that are increasingly rare in Britain. She reflects on her childhood in "Nests," in which she recalls collecting detritus like seeds and pinecones, and in "Tekels Park," about roaming a meadow in the 1970s that's since been sold to developers. Her appreciation of birds is displayed in essays including "A Cuckoo in the House," which details how cuckoos trick other birds into sheltering them, and the title essay, about the flight patterns of "magical" swifts. The message throughout is clear: the world humans enjoy today may not be around tomorrow, so it should not be taken for granted. This will inspire readers to get outside. (Aug.)"
(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Additional Information
Subjects Natural history -- Miscellanea.
Nature.
English essays -- 21st century.
Essays.
Publisher New York :2020
Edition First Grove Atlantic hardcover edition.
Other Titles Essays.
Language English
Description ix, 261 pages ; 22 cm
ISBN 9780802128812
0802128815
Other Classic View