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Cargando... Beaverland: How One Weird Rodent Made America (edición 2022)por Leila Philip (Autor)
Información de la obraBeaverland: How One Weird Rodent Made America por Leila Philip
Books Read in 2023 (2,693) Cargando...
Inscríbete en LibraryThing para averiguar si este libro te gustará. Actualmente no hay Conversaciones sobre este libro. Going into this book, and having not read any of Philip's previous works, I assumed that it would mostly be dealing with the history of the American fur trade; it's certainly what the folks who generate library catalogue numbers thought it was about. Be that as it may, if it relates to the beaver, Philip managed to get it into her narrative, and that might be the problem. At a certain point, this feels like a collection of strong magazine articles struggling to escape a fair-to-middling book. The portions dealing with the animals themselves, and environmental issues, were the most interesting to me. This was followed by Philip's own participant-observer exercises. I will admit that the chunks dealing with the rise, zenith, and fading away of the American fur trade felt a little perfunctory, and this is speaking as someone who reads a lot of American history. Ditto, the portions dealing with the beaver and Native American culture. Another book where your mileage may differ. ( ) This book was recommended by LibraryThing. Probably by the new recommendation system (my notes are not entirely clear on that). It was not one of their more inspired choices. It is probably a good book, but not to my taste. I just don't like nature books that focus on the narrator's experience, the people they interview, and similar. If you like that kind of book, you may well like this one. Ditto if you enjoy reading lots of factoids connected only by the author's subjective experience. And in fact, some of the factoids are fascinating. But there are no footnotes, and a throwaway claim about the genetics of the Eastern Coyote was the last straw for me - the author claims that something I had believed to be true about that has recently been disproven, without even a hint of which researcher, which publication, or when. I abandoned the book after page 64 (of 317). I did mine its sources section for books more to my taste - focused on nature (e.g. beavers, or coyotes), or history, or trapping, and hopefully complete with footnotes. Even a biography of John Jacob Astor (fur entrepreneur who gets discussed in one of the chapters) would be more interesting to me. Loved this book! I found it to be a thoughtful, all-encompassing look at beavers. It's amazing how much of our American history revolved around the beaver. And in how complex and fascinating beavers are. And how they continue to affect our society today. Growing up in Wisconsin, I had quite a bit of exposure to beavers. My father and grand-father both were avid trappers, and I could not help but absorb the lessons and lore about beavers that they taught me. I did not follow in their footsteps, but can appreciate the lessons they taught me. As a college graduate with a degree in natural resources, and a lifetime outdoorsman and fisherman, I continue to learn about beavers. They are one of the most fascinating animals I know of. I was very grateful with the author's even handedness in her telling of the very different groups that concern beavers. And especially pleased to learn things that I did not know about beavers. The book just left me with a satisfied feeling of nostalgia, appreciation of today, and hope for the future. What more can one ask? Highly recommend this book! sin reseñas | añadir una reseña
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"In the rich naturalist tradition of H Is for Hawk and The Soul of an Octopus, Beaverland tells the tumultuous, eye-opening story of how beavers and the beaver fur trade shaped America's history, culture, and environment. Before the American empires of steel and coal and oil, before the railroads, there was the empire of fur. Beginning with the early trans-Atlantic trade in North America, Leila Philip traces the beaver's profound influence on our nation's early economy and feverish western expansion, its first corporations and multi-millionaires. As Leila's passion for this weird and wonderful rodent widens from her careful observation of its dams in her local pond, she chronicles the many characters she meets in her pursuit of the beaver: fur trappers and fur traders, biologists and fur auctioneers, wildlife managers, PETA activists, Native American environmental vigilantes, scientists, engineers and beaver enthusiasts. What emerges is a startling portrait of the secretive, largely hidden world of the contemporary fur trade and an immersive ecological and historical investigation of these animals that, once trapped to the point of extinction, have rebounded to become one of the greatest conservation stories of the 20th century. Now, beavers offer surprising solutions to some of the most urgent problems caused by climate change. Beautifully written and filled with the many colorful characters-fur trappers and fur traders and fur auctioneers, wildlife managers and biologists, Native American environmental vigilantes. She meets a Harvard scientist from the Blackfeet Reservation in Montana, using drones to create 3-dimensional images of beaver dams. She meets an environmental restoration consultant in the Chesapeake whose nickname is the beaver whisperer. Beaverland transports readers into scenes of beavers in their ponds and the scientists and fur trappers in pursuit of them, widening arcs of information to reveal the profound ways in which beavers and the beaver trade shaped history, culture, and our environment"-- No se han encontrado descripciones de biblioteca. |
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Google Books — Cargando... GénerosSistema Decimal Melvil (DDC)338.3Social sciences Economics Production Water products; Fish, ice, etc.Clasificación de la Biblioteca del CongresoValoraciónPromedio:
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