Eric Wagner is a staff writer with the Puget Sound Institute at University of Washington, Tacoma. He is author of After the Blast: The Ecological Recovery of Mount St. Helens and Penguins in the Desert, and wrote the text for Once and Future River: Reclaiming the Duwamish.
His new book is Seabirds as Sentinels: Auklets, Puffins, Shearwaters, and the View from Destruction Island.
At Lit Hub Wagner tagged six essential books about birds, including:
Helen Macdonald, H is for HawkRead about another title on the list.
Here is another book about a raptor, but unlike [J.A. Baker's] The Peregrine, I had read how good this one was ahead of time—had read how,following their father’s death, Macdonald poured their grief into the training of a Eurasian goshawk, juxtaposing their own journey with that of English writer and naturalist T.H. White. Approaching such a highly praised book can be a tricky proposition. Will it justify (or exceed) its reputation? Or will you wonder—awkwardly, uncertainly—whether you alone have seen through the stuff and nonsense in thinking the book not that great? Thankfully, with H is for Hawk, it’s the former. So much the former.
H Is for Hawk is among Brian Buckbee's eight books about wild animal companions, Sarah Ruiz-Grossman's seven books celebrating the healing magic of birds, Kristina Busch's seven books about daughters grieving their fathers, Raynor Winn's nine top nature memoirs, Lit Hub's ten best memoirs of the decade, Sigrid Nunez's six favorite books that feature animals, Sam Miller's top ten books about fathers, Barack Obama's summer 2016 reading list, Jeffrey Lent's top ten books about justice and redemption, and Alex Hourston’s ten top unlikely friendships in literature.
--Marshal Zeringue
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