hardcover, 336 pages
Published Sept. 14, 2021 by W. W. Norton & Company.
Really enjoyed the colorful prose style and honest, frank story telling. Learned a lot about wild animals. Mary Roach is a great, entertaining writer and I look forward to seeing more from her.
Mary Roach has an amazing ability to make whatever topic she chooses into the most interesting thing in the world. This time, the every-woman science writer decided on the epic and endless battle between humankind and nature, and she knocks it out of the park. From gulls ruining flowers at the Vatican to “danger trees” this book gives you the thinking behind how humans deal with nature when nature doesn’t play by our rules.
I love Roach and her style. She’s thoughtful, not afraid to ask ANY question, and her humor rides the pages like a surfer on a perfect wave. I highly recommend this, or any of her other books.
This was most definitely a solid "meh" for me. I'm not sure why, as Mary Roach's books are auto-buys for me now. The subject matter was occasionally interesting, but overall not for me. Her footnotes were spectacular, as always.
The beginning of the book was what I expected: animals that are an annoyance to humans and how we deal with them. She went through several species that are well known problems. And the question is raised – partly by Mary Roach and partly by the reader – what gives us the power to decide who gets to prevail in such cases.
Then she gets into trees and other plants and how our societies build poisons from them! This section really seems somewhat unrelated to the overall point, but oh well.
The ending section addresses pests and invasive species. And the same question does seem to arise: what gives us the rights to decide what animals are allowed and who can run the environment?
I like Mary Roach; I own several of her books, and both my husband and I get a kick out of her and appreciate the knowledge …
The beginning of the book was what I expected: animals that are an annoyance to humans and how we deal with them. She went through several species that are well known problems. And the question is raised – partly by Mary Roach and partly by the reader – what gives us the power to decide who gets to prevail in such cases.
Then she gets into trees and other plants and how our societies build poisons from them! This section really seems somewhat unrelated to the overall point, but oh well.
The ending section addresses pests and invasive species. And the same question does seem to arise: what gives us the rights to decide what animals are allowed and who can run the environment?
I like Mary Roach; I own several of her books, and both my husband and I get a kick out of her and appreciate the knowledge and science that she shares. The last section spends a great deal of time addressing humane and nonlethal approaches to controlling – or trying to help control our environment, and I appreciate the fact that she points out that the simplest way, the seemingly most humane way, is NOT always the way to go. Why are there so many different opinions on sso many things? Because nothing's as simple as many would like it to be.
A bit of non-fiction for a strange topic, when animals "break the law". Despite the introduction, it's almost entirely modern although it zooms out to get a global view of some issues that I hadn't ever thought about in my own little bubble. Overall, a really fun read about the balance of nature and a healthy dose of optimism at the end that left me on a positive note.
