The Song of the Dodo: Island Biogeography in an Age of Extinction | 
 enlarge | Author: David Quammen
Publisher: Scribner
Category: Book
List Price: $22.00
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Avg. Customer Rating:  65 reviews
Sales Rank: 30157
Media: Paperback
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 704
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.8
Dimensions (in): 9.2 x 6.1 x 1.3
ISBN: 0684827123
Dewey Decimal Number: 578.752
EAN: 9780684827124
ASIN: 0684827123
Publication Date: April 14, 1997
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Amazon.com
In a wonderful weave of science, metaphor, and prose, David Quammen, author of The Flight of the Iguana, applies the lessons of island biogeography - the study of the distribution of species on islands and islandlike patches of landscape - to modern ecosystem decay, offering us insight into the origin and extinction of species, our relationship to nature, and the future of our world.
Product Description
David Quammen's book, The Song of the Dodo, is a brilliant, stirring work, breathtaking in its scope, far-reaching in its message -- a crucial book in precarious times, which radically alters the way in which we understand the natural world and our place in that world. It's also a book full of entertainment and wonders. In The Song of the Dodo, we follow Quammen's keen intellect through the ideas, theories, and experiments of prominent naturalists of the last two centuries. We trail after him as he travels the world, tracking the subject of island biogeography, which encompasses nothing less than the study of the origin and extinction of all species. Why is this island idea so important? Because islands are where species most commonly go extinct -- and because, as Quammen points out, we live in an age when all of Earth's landscapes are being chopped into island-like fragments by human activity. Through his eyes, we glimpse the nature of evolution and extinction, and in so doing come to understand the monumental diversity of our planet, and the importance of preserving its wild landscapes, animals, and plants. We also meet some fascinating human characters. By the book's end we are wiser, and more deeply concerned, but Quammen leaves us with a message of excitement and hope.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 60 more reviews...
 Hard science in a readable text March 8, 2008
Quammen does an exceptional job of explaining why biogeography should be important to you. He offers a scientific, historical, and personal narrative. As a professional biologist, I like the accuracy in bringing theory to a general audience. For students of biology, if reading MacArthur and Wilson's paper left you a little perplexed, this is the book that will smooth out those rough edges and assure that you "get it". The book probably holds little interest for people who aren't serious science buffs, but even for interested laypersons, there is enough of a narrative running through the text to make it an easy, sensible read. Suffers from flaws of historical perspective, but none so blatant as to make this text unworthy. Highly recommended.
 Science Journalism? Yeh, it rules! September 26, 2007
This is the first book I've read by Quammen, an imminently talented journalist who perfectly balances the information and writing style of the book. He follows a chronological progression of island biogeography from Darwin through Jared Diamond (who became hugely famous shortly after the release of this book). Quammen's travelogues are excellent, combining a sympathetic, open perspective that is adventurous and engaged. Late in the book, Quammen describes a climb to the nest of a Mauritius kestrel: "When I'm thirty feet up, a tree branch flicks off my glasses, which drop to the ground. I could go down and retrieve them, sure, that would be sensible, but I'd fall too far behind the cheerful maniacs...
'Do you trust this vine?' I call up to Jones. Gangly but tall, he must weigh two hundred pounds, and from this angle I can appreciate the size of his feet.
'Not greatly.'
We ratchet our way upward, slowly, on the cliff face. It isn't Half Dome but it's more perilous than the average birdwatching stroll. We rise out above the valley. As we move beyond the treetops, I give myself an explicit mental reminder: Fall from here and you don't go home. Finally, Jones and I catch up with Lewis on a narrow rock shelf, like a window ledge ten stories above Lexington Avenue...
I gaze out at the panorama--the forested canyon below us, the deer ranch beyond, and the cane plantation beyond that, all spreading westward for five miles to the crescent of beach and then the great turquoise plane of the Indian Ocean." (562-3)
It's Quammen's excitement and sensitivty that inspire the reader to continue and to care, to take notice of humanity's influence: carving nature into islands, resulting in astonishing rates of extinction and ecosystem decay. But Quammen urges us to cling to hope, not despair, because "besides being fruitless it's far less exciting than hope, however slim." (636)
 Desultory fluff September 6, 2007
2 out of 4 found this review helpful
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.
Fabulous September 6, 2006
3 out of 3 found this review helpful
Quammen's book is a rare bird--a clearly written science book that doesn't condescend to readers. It's long enough to go fairly deep, and deep enough to be interesting: it's on my short list of favorites.
As other reviewers point out, the history of squabbles wears a little thin, but neither Darwin nor anyone else sticks in my memory as having been unfairly kneecapped. In fact, the only faintly negative impression I had was of the excessive care Quammen takes in presenting some fairly basic math. Highly recommended.
Plotting the roadmap to species extinction July 23, 2006
12 out of 14 found this review helpful
"Islands are where species go to die." - David Quammen, author of THE SONG OF THE DODO
This book is all about the birth, maturation, and real world applications of the science of island biogeography as it relates to the circumstances of species isolation and diversification and subsequent decline and extinction. Here, "island" means not only the obvious - a bit of land surrounded by water - but any habitat separated from the rest of the world by a geographic barrier which its resident species are unlikely to cross. "Island", then, can refer, for examples, to a lake, a remnant of rain forest surrounded by clear-cut, a temperate mountaintop surrounded by desert, a national park hemmed in by human habitation, a cave, an expanse of jungle bordered by wide rivers, or a literal island in the sea.
Island biogeography inexorably leads the reader to the concept of conservation biology and viable-population theory. You see, the rampant human population is cutting the world's diverse ecosystems into little bits - islands - thus dooming countless species living within them - especially large vertebrates - to eventual destruction.
THE SONG OF THE DODO is a lucid, erudite, troubling, and extensively researched piece of science writing by journalist David Quammen. It's biggest fault is that he just about beats the subject to death. Where, perhaps, just a few examples of past species extinction (the Dodo or the Micronesian honeyeater) and present pending extinction (the indri of Madagascar or the Concho water snake in Texas) would suffice, the author includes at least a dozen more. But, as Quammen is such an excellent writer who feels strongly about this important subject, one cannot award less than five stars. Amidst the record of both realized and threatened animal extirpations, David even manages to be humorous when his narrative becomes a personal travelogue as he journeys to exotic places to observe the pending carnage for himself, as when tripping face-first into a spiderweb on Guam ("My worst nightmares feature tarantulas the size of badgers") or getting mugged in Rio de Janeiro. About the last incident, when confronted at the local police station with the one (of three) of his attackers unlucky enough to get caught, David quips:
"He's looking at five years (imprisonment) I'm told. Cinco anos. Cinco, no kidding? that's a lot of anos, I say. Probably I should feel terrible for the young thug, on grounds of socioeconomic extenuation, but in the weakness of the moment my liberal knee fails to jerk and cinco anos sounds fine."
The most glaring negative is the lack of photographs, both of the various creatures under discussion and the scientists, past and present, who've contributed to, and fought over, the theory and practice of island biogeography.
Recently, I saw AN INCONVENIENT TRUTH, a documentary on global warming. Taken together with THE SONG OF THE DODO, my pessimism is kindled to a white heat. I don't have a high opinion of my fellow man: Homo sapiens is a rapacious species ungenerous to the other life forms riding Mother Earth. We blithely defecate on our own doorstep. At some point, the planet, which will ultimately endure, will turn to Man and say, "I'll show you!" Then, as Quammen puts it:
"When we ourselves do go (extinct), the sparrows and the cockroaches and the rats and the dandelions that survive us should eventually give rise to a new inflorescence of diversity. I'll leave it to you to decide whether that represents a gloomy scenario or a cheery one."
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