University of Virginia Press, 2008
I wanted to know how science learns what it tells us about the lives of wild animals, and for this book I traveled with scientists. I started out in my own New York State, where our resident coyotes are making their presence only too well known. Then I went on to the Channel Islands off California, where a fox is struggling in the trap of its island home, to Panama, where the enigmatic kinkajou lives an aerial life in the forest canopy, and to a Jurassic-era forest preserve in Chile, where a rare and elusive fox is staging a slow comeback.
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The book is beautifully written, as one would expect, given its author. I admire its unsentimental tone, its insightful descriptions of the scientific process, and especially its arresting moments with the animals themselves.
—Jennifer Ackerman
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Holly Menino is an engaging, personable, unsentimental, and scientifically literate writer.
—Donald McCaig