Return of the Crazy Bird : The Sad, Strange Tale of the Dodo

Clara Pinto-Correia

ISBN 10: 1441931805 / ISBN 13: 9781441931801

Published by Springer New York, Springer US, 2010

About this Item

Druck auf Anfrage Neuware - Printed after ordering - Although everybody is familiar with the dodo bird, very few people know its history. Yet this history is compelling when read as a fable of the negative impact of humans on Earth's ecosystems. The author describes the complexity of the factors involved in animal extinction. Although we think of ourselves as more ecologically aware than our ancestors, we are propelling extinction to alarming rates.

Seller Inventory # 9781441931801

Bibliographic Details

• Title: Return of the Crazy Bird : The Sad, Strange Tale of the Dodo
• Publisher: Springer New York, Springer US
• Publication Date: 2010
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1441931805
• ISBN 13: 9781441931801
• Binding: Taschenbuch
• Condition: Neu
• Dimensions: 235W x 155H x 13D millimeters 235 millimeters width by 155 millimeters height by 13 millimeters depth
• Weight: 365 grams

About this title

Synopsis

Although everybody is familiar with the dodo bird, very few people know its history. Yet this history is compelling when read as a fable of the negative impact of humans on Earth's ecosystems. The author describes the complexity of the factors involved in animal extinction. Although we think of ourselves as more ecologically aware than our ancestors, we are propelling extinction to alarming rates.

From the Inside Flap

The dodo went from being newly discovered to extinction in little more than a century. This flightless, odd-looking bird was seen for the first time by Europeans and then annihilated by Europeans all between the early sixteenth and the second half of the seventeenth century. By the end of the nineteenth century, all that remained of what Portuguese explorers called the "crazy bird" was a patchwork of tall tales, contradictory reports, incompatible illustrations, and a single dodo's skull and foot. The dodo had become, in short, an unsolvable puzzle, but a puzzle that persisted in art, literature, and scientific speculation.

In this remarkable book, Clara Pinto-Correia shows how the human intellect and the imagination prey on sketchy facts and images, and how missing pieces and incomplete lines are merged and fused to make a cohesive whole. By considering the incredibly strong hold of this bumbling and ungainly creature on our collective scientific and literary imagination, Pinto-Correia teaches us not just about the ill-fated bird from the island paradise of Mauritius, but about our own abiding need to make sense of the world around us.