Max Forrestal is going to fail biology if he doesn't complete a 20-page paper on extinction by 2pm on Tuesday, but his mother, Lily, is dying of cancer, and school is the last thing on his mind. His father, Ellery, a biologist obsessed with saving a rare Bolivian insect, is incapable of dealing with his wife's impending death, or his son's distress. Max's biology teacher, Khim Phan, tries to figure out why Max is failing the class. Helping Max, however, pushes Khim into a magical journey of his own, from the Cambodian fields of his youth into the undiscovered country beyond.

Thirty years ago, two young biologists named Robert MacArthur and Edward O. Wilson triggered a far-reaching scientific revolution. In a book titled The Theory of Island Biogeography, they presented a new view of a little-understood matter: the geographical patterns in which animal and plant species occur. Why do marsupials exist in Australia and South America, but not in Africa? Why do tigers exist in Asia, but not in New Guinea? Influenced by MacArthur and Wilson's book, an entire generation of ecologists has recognized that island biogeography - the study of the distribution of species on islands and islandlike patches of landscape - yields important insights into the origin and extinction of species everywhere. The new mode of thought focuses particularly on a single question: Why have island ecosystems always suffered such high rates of extinction? In our own age, with all the world's landscapes, from Tasmania to the Amazon to Yellowstone, now being carved into islandlike fragments by human activity, the implications of island biogeography are more urgent than ever. Until now, this scientific revolution has remained unknown to the general public. But over the past eight years, David Quammen has followed its threads on a globe-circling journey of discovery. In Madagascar, he has considered the meaning of tenrecs, a group of strange, prickly mammals native to that island. On the island of Guam, he has confronted a pestilential explosion of snakes and spiders. In these and other places, he has prowled through wild terrain with extraordinary scientists who study unusual beasts. The result is The Song of the Dodo, a book filled with landscape, wonder, and ideas. Besides being a grand outdoor adventure, it is, above all, a wake-up call to the age of extinctions.

The sparrow, like the spotted owl of the Pacific Northwest, was the victim—the innocent bystander—of an intense human struggle between those who advocate growth and jobs at any cost and those who insist that each life form that is endangered be protected. This is the story of how the Endangered Species Act failed a small songbird, the dusky seaside sparrow. The sparrow's only habitat lay in the path of the Kennedy Space Center, not far from Disney World. Mark Walters' moving narrative describes how the social and political forces of an era forced irrevocable and profound changes in the environment of Brevard County, Florida, and brought about the extinction of a small bird. Walters begins his story in the late 1950s, before Cape Canaveral was renamed the Kennedy Space Center. Against the backdrop of Merritt Island and the marshlands along the Indian, Banana, and St. Johns rivers—the only places on the planet where the sparrow thrived—he chronicles the struggles of many different personalities, strong-minded individuals whose lives and personal fates become inextricably entwined with those of the dusky. The cast of characters includes the head of Brevard County Mosquito Control, bureaucrats and rangers with U.S. Fish & Wildlife, NASA administrators, real estate developers, ranchers, highway engineers, egg collectors, conservationists, and finally, Disney World itself, home of the last duskies and their hybrid offspring. The sparrow, like the spotted owl of the Pacific Northwest, was the victim—the innocent bystander—of an intense human struggle between those who advocate growth and jobs at any cost and those who insist that each life form that is endangered be protected at any cost, and few, if any, winners in the end.

Why have island ecosystems always suffered such high rates of extinction? In our age, with all the world's landscapes, from Tasmania to the Amazon to Yellowstone, now being carved into island-like fragments by human activity, the implications of this question are more urgent than ever. Over the past eight years, David Quammen has followed the threads of island biogeography on a globe-encircling journey of discovery.

At once joyous and somber, this thoughtful gathering of new and selected essays spans Kathleen Dean Moore's distinguished career as a tireless advocate for environmental activism in the face of climate change. In this meditation on the music of the natural world, Moore celebrates the call of loons, howl of wolves, bellow of whales, laughter of children, and shriek of frogs, even as she warns of the threats against them. Each group of essays moves, as Moore herself has been moved, from celebration to lamentation to bewilderment and finally to the determination to act in defense of wild songs and the creatures who sing them. Music is the shivering urgency and exuberance of life ongoing. In a time of terrible silencing, Moore asks, who will forgive us if we do not save nature's songs?

Contains poems about the world's extinct animals.

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