Bringing Back the Dodo: Lessons in Natural And Unnatural History

A penetrating book on the very roots of our relationship with nature.

Bringing Back the Dodo is about how the forces of evolution and extinction have shaped the living world, and the part that humans play therein. This strikingly thought-provoking book, in the tradition of John McPhee and David Quammen, explores the very roots of our relationship with nature and challenges us to look at ourselves and the natural world around us in new light.

Wayne Grady searches our history and prehistory to explain why humans love nature and fear it at the same time. He explores the repercussions of our manipulations of nature through science, as exemplified by the Harvard Mouse, and suggests which extinct species we could clone (sadly, probably not the dodo), and whether we ought to try. He looks into the ramifications of getting up on our hind legs to walk, and what it meant to humankind when we lost our nocturnal vision. A visit to the supermarket leads him to uncover our vestigial longing for subtropical foods, and elsewhere he ponders how our instinct for “home” compares to that of other animals.

These elegant and penetrating essays, based on pieces originally published in Explore magazine, linger long in the imagination. They speak to some of our most fundamental questions about the human and animal worlds, and confirm Wayne Grady’s standing as one of our foremost literary science writers.

Wayne Grady’s eight books of non-fiction include The Dinosaur Project, The Quiet Limit of the World, Chasing the Chinook, and The Bone Museum. He is also a prolific magazine writer, an equally prolific editor of Canadian travel, fiction, and nature writing, and the translator of many French authors into English, including Antonine Maillet and Herménégilde Chiasson. His most recent book, the bestselling Tree: A Life Story, was written in collaboration with David Suzuki. Wayne Grady lives near Kingston, Ontario.