Alien Invasion : America's Battle with Non-Native Animals and Plants

A foreword by US Secretary of the Interior Babbitt commences this nontechnical assessment and call for education before it's too late to counteract the alien invaders from Earth among us. Lists America's most troublesome species of flora and fauna by region, but lacks any photos of nefarious aliens such as hydrilla or rosy wolfsnail. Annotation c. by Book News, Inc., Portland, Or.

Beginning in the glossy Kennedy era, Thomas Y. Canby traveled the world, creating texts that could stand up to his magazine's famously arresting images. From Botswana to the Bering Sea: My Thirty Years with National Geographic is a memoir written with a journalist's flair, a trained eye for detail and a determination to get the story right, whether remembering the author's global trackings of rats or his probings of the causes and horrific human toll of African famine. Photos and maps, not seen by PW. (Island/Shearwater, $24.95 288p 1-55963-517-7) "It's the invasive ones we have to watch out for, the ones that proliferate out of control, degrade our ecosystems, make us ill, and devour our crops." Not all imported flora and fauna are dangerous, but in Alien Invasion: America's Battle with Non-Native Animals and Plants, veteran nature writer Robert S. Devine shows us how insidious they can be, from viruses that repeatedly destroy papaya crops to the sea lamprey, which "kills other fish by clamping on with its big, vampire mouth." Devine also explains what's being done to combat these alien menaces. (National Geographic, $24 288p ISBN
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Serious gardeners, ecologists, and natural history and botany buffs will appreciate this book on nonnative plants and animals that have become invasive pests. Written in typical National Geographic style, it includes personal narratives of scientists battling the invaders. There are also plenty of facts concerning the economic and ecological impacts of the 6000 nonnative species (such as gypsy moths, fireants, lamprey eels, and others) that are driving out native animals and plants. Nontechnical and readable, the book is divided into two parts: Part 1 details eight different invasive pests, while Part 2 describes efforts to fight them by organizations ranging from government agencies to private citizen groups such as the Nature Conservancy. Devine also briefly discusses imported garden flowers and foreign viruses. Highly recommended for public, high school, and college libraries.?Laura E. Lipton, Ctr. for Urban Horticulture, Univ. of Washington, Seattle
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.