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Vanishing Treasures: A Bestiary of Extraordinary Endangered Creatures by Katherine Rundell
Vanishing Treasures: A Bestiary of Extraordinary Endangered Creatures by Katherine Rundell
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Vanishing Treasures: A Bestiary of Extraordinary Endangered Creatures by Katherine Rundell
Publisher: Doubleday Books
US SRP: $26.00 US
Binding: Hardcover
Pub Date: November 12, 2024
Physical Info: 0.9" H x 8.51" L x 5.78" W (0.77 lbs) 224 pages
NATIONAL BESTSELLER - NAMED A BEST BOOK OF FALL: WASHINGTON POST, CBS, BOSTON GLOBE, CHICAGO TRIBUNE & MORE - From the #1 New York Times bestselling author Katherine Rundell comes a "rare and magical book" (Bill Bryson) reckoning with the vanishing wonders of our natural world
The world is more astonishing, more miraculous, and more wonderful than our wildest imaginings. In this brilliant and passionately persuasive book, Katherine Rundell takes us on a globe-spanning tour of the world's most awe-inspiring animals currently facing extinction.
The world is more astonishing, more miraculous, and more wonderful than our wildest imaginings. In this brilliant and passionately persuasive book, Katherine Rundell takes us on a globe-spanning tour of the world's most awe-inspiring animals currently facing extinction.
Consider the seahorse: couples mate for life and meet each morning for a dance, pirouetting and changing colors before going their separate ways, to dance again the next day. The American wood frog survives winter by allowing itself to freeze solid, its heartbeat slowing until it stops altogether. Come spring, the heart kick-starts itself spontaneously back to life. As for the lemur, it lives in matriarchal troops led by an alpha female (it's not unusual for female ring-tailed lemurs to slap males across the face when they become aggressive). Whenever they are cold or frightened, they group together in what's known as a lemur ball, paws and tails intertwined, to form a furry mass as big as a bicycle wheel.
But each of these extraordinary animals is endangered or holds a sub-species that is endangered. This urgent, inspiring book of essays dedicated to 23 unusual and underappreciated creatures is a clarion call insisting that we look at the world around us with new eyes--to see the magic of the animals we live among, their unknown histories and capabilities, and above all how lucky we are to tread the same ground as such vanishing treasures.
Beautifully illustrated, and full of inimitable wit and intellect, Vanishing Treasures is a chance to be awestruck and lovestruck, to reckon with the beauty of the world, its fragility, and its strangeness.
KATHERINE RUNDELL is a Fellow of St. Catherine's College, Oxford. She is the author of Super-Infinite: The Transformations of John Donne, which won the Baillie Gifford Prize for Non-Fiction, and the recipient of the British Book Award for Book of the Year and Author of the Year. Her multi-award-winning novels for children have been translated into more than forty languages and have sold over two million copies worldwide. She has written for, among others, the New Yorker, The New York Times, The New York Review of Books, and The London Review of Books.
Review Quotes:
"This is the perfect book to read in the aftermath of a planet-threatening election. In times like these, terror and rage will carry us only so far. We will also need unstinting, unceasing love. For the hard work that lies ahead, Ms. Rundell writes, 'Our competent and furious love will have to be what fuels us.' This is a book to help you fall in love."-- Margaret Renkl, The New York Times
"Extraordinary... For anyone whose capacity for wonder could use a jumpstart, Rundell's essays are essential reading... Vanishing Treasures makes readers see, really see, some of the miraculous creatures we still share this fragile world with."-- Maureen Corrigan, Fresh Air
"[Rundell's] extraordinary compendium of creatures informs, astounds, and enrages in equal measure.... Genius.... [Rundell] coaxes us into caring by plying us with spellbinding stories and a cornucopia of incredibly strange but true trivia about 23 species currently facing extinction."-- San Francisco Chronicle
"Downright breathtaking."-- Wall Street Journal
"Already beloved for her children's books, Rundell writes here for adults who still hold a child's love for animals. This celebration of seahorses, lemurs, and others doubles as a wake-up call: look around and protect what you love."-- Boston Globe
"The best writer you're not reading (yet)... Vanishing Treasures is composed of nearly two dozen hilarious, strange, totally true essays about the natural world that summon real wonder."-- Chicago Tribune
"[ Vanishing Treasures] consists of loving, playful essays about animals that are endangered or hold a subspecies that is endangered: sea horses, lemurs, golden moles and more. It's pervaded with both wonder and worry, as indeed is much of [Rundell's] work."-- Sarah Lyall, The New York Times
"An enthralling compendium of remarkable creatures, an urgent appeal for conservation and a joyful reminder that the natural world is 'so startling that our capacity for wonder, huge as it is, can barely skim the edges of the truth...' Every chapter contains sparkling nuggets that range from eye-opening to jaw-dropping to thought-provoking.... As befits a book packed with marvels, this is a marvelous book, one to enjoy and learn from."-- Minnesota Star-Tribune
"Gorgeous. Each fact captured in these declarative sentences sits like some blown-glass Chihuly sequitur pushing us ever-further into the field of what is possible on this planet.... [ Vanishing Treasures] is an epic poem, as it turns out, replete with shining islands, towering mountains, small glittering gods and us -- the monsters."-- Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
