Wild Thoughts from Wild Places

In Wild Thoughts from Wild Places, award-winning journalist David Quammen reminds us why he has become one of our most beloved science and nature writers.

This collection of twenty-three of Quammen's most intriguing, most exciting, most memorable pieces takes us to meet kayakers on the Futaleufu River of southern Chile, where Quammen describes how it feels to travel in fast company and flail for survival in the river's maw. We are introduced to the commerce in pearls (and black-market parrots) in the Aru Islands of eastern Indonesia. Quammen even finds wildness in smog-choked Los Angeles -- embodied in an elusive population of urban coyotes, too stubborn and too clever to surrender to the sprawl of civilization.

With humor and intelligence, David Quammen's Wild Thoughts from Wild Places also reminds us that humans are just one of the many species on earth with motivations, goals, quirks, and eccentricities. Expect to be entertained and moved on this journey through the wilds of science and nature.

In this collection of "Natural Acts" columns from the pages of Outside magazine, wide-ranging ecojournalist David Quammen turns his attention to all manner of earthly matters: the physics of flowing water and the thrills of kayaking, the evolution of supercoyotes, and the lives of famous naturalists (Charles Darwin, Gilbert White). Above all, Quammen celebrates the joys of life in the outdoors, especially in his favorite haunts in the mountains and trout streams of Montana. "We never know what he have lost, or what we have found," he writes. That may be, but in these pages you'll know that you have found a lively intelligence and wonderful natural history writing.