The Hunt for the Golden Mole: All Creatures Great & Small and Why They Matter

Girling, Richard

ISBN 10: 1619024500 / ISBN 13: 9781619024502

Published by Counterpoint (edition First Edition), 2014

About this Item

The item might be beaten up but readable. May contain markings or highlighting, as well as stains, bent corners, or any other major defect, but the text is not obscured in any way.

Seller Inventory # 1619024500-7-1

Bibliographic Details

• Title: The Hunt for the Golden Mole: All Creatures Great & Small and Why They Matter
• Publisher: Counterpoint (edition First Edition)
• Publication Date: 2014
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1619024500
• ISBN 13: 9781619024502
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition: First Edition.
• Condition: Fair

About this title

Synopsis

Taking as its narrative engine the hunt for an animal that is legendarily rare, Richard Girling writes an engaging and highly informative history of humankind's interest in hunting and collecting – what prompts us to do this? what good might come of our need to catalog all the living things of the natural world?



Girling, named Environmental Journalist of the Years 2008 and 2009, has here chronicled – through the hunt for the Somali golden mole – the development of the conservation movement, the importance of diversity in the animal kingdom, including humankind within this realm, as well as a hard look at extinction.



The Somali mole of the title, first descibed in print in a text book published in 1964, had as sole evidence of its existence only the fragment of a jaw bone found in an owl pellet, a specimen that seemed to have vanished as Girling began his exploration. Intrigued by the elusiveness of this creature and what the hunt for the facts of its existence might tell us about extinction, he was drawn to the dusty vaults of museums of natural history where the most rare artifacts are stored and catalogued, as he found himself caught up in the need to track it down.



Part quest, part travelog, the book that results not only offers an important voice to the scientific debate about extinction and biodiversity it becomes an environmental call to arms.

About the Author

Richard Girling is an award–winning environmental feature writer for The Sunday Times. In 2002 he was named Specialist Writer of the Year at the UK Press Awards and was short listed for the same award in 2005 and 2006. This is his first work of narrative nonfiction.