Traveling on business as I have been recently, it hasn’t taken long for me to fall behind on keeping you all up to date on what Mark’s been reviewing over on his blog. As it turns out, he been quite busy indeed!
Back on the 15th of April, Mark reviewed Dr. John Reilly‘s The Ascent of Birds; How Modern Science is Revealing their Story. An examination of the evolutionary paths that have been taken by the world’s modern bird species from their ancient beginnings, Dr. Reilly mixes in a number of his personal observations gained as an avid bird watcher, making the work, according to Mark, “accessible to a non-expert who wants to understand things better.” The Ascent of Birds was published by Pelagic Publishing in mid April and is presently available in the UK; those in North America should see it become available there in late May.
Then on 22 April, Mark turned his attention to the freshly published Curlew Moon, Mary Colwell‘s recounting of her 500 mile walk from western Ireland to the east coast of England to discover the present state of the imperiled Eurasian Curlew. A distinguished journalist specializing in natural history, Ms. Colwell has a particular passion for curlews. Indeed, as Mark notes in his review, she is “partly responsible for stirring up the interest in this declining bird and her book will help maintain a focus on it into the future.” Curlew Moon is presently available in the UK from William Collins, an imprint of Harper Collins UK, and should cross the pond to North America sometime in September.
And, to get us all back up to date, just this Sunday, Mark published a guest review by Ian Carter of Tim Birkhead’s soon-to-be-published The Wonderful Mr Willughby; The First True Ornithologist. As an advance copy only recently reached my own desk, I was particularly impressed to see that reviews were already being published, but then I suppose given Professor Birkhead‘s prolific publishing record in the subject of ornithology, it’s not surprising that the community would eagerly jump on the latest publication by an author who has so clearly proven himself to be both informative as well as entertaining in his work. The Wonderful Mr Willughby will be published by Bloomsbury next week in the UK and make its US debut sometime in July.
Links to Mark Avery’s Sunday book reviews appear in The Well-read Naturalist by special arrangement. You can find all of Mark’s past reviews as well as a wide-ranging collection of his other writings on his Standing Up for Nature website. Mark’s opinions regarding the books he reviews are his own.
