The Eye of the Sandpiper: Stories from the Living World

Brandon Keim

Published by Cornell University Press 2017

The Eye of the Sandpiper

Stories from the Living World

Brandon Keim

https://doi.org/10.7591/9781501712654

Overview
Contents

About this book

In The Eye of the Sandpiper, Brandon Keim pairs cutting-edge science with a deep love of nature, conveying his insights in prose that is both accessible and beautiful. In an elegant, thoughtful tour of nature in the twenty-first century, Keim continues in the tradition of Lewis Thomas, Stephen Jay Gould, and David Quammen, reporting from the frontiers of science while celebrating the natural world’s wonders and posing new questions about our relationship to the rest of life on Earth.

The stories in The Eye of the Sandpiper are arranged in four thematic sections. Each addresses nature through a different lens. The first is evolutionary and ecological dynamics, from how patterns form on butterfly wings to the ecological importance of oft-reviled lampreys. The second section explores the inner lives of animals, which science has only recently embraced: empathy in rats, emotions in honeybees, spirituality in chimpanzees. The third section contains stories of people acting on insights both ecological and ethological: nourishing blighted rivers, but also caring for injured pigeons at a hospital for wild birds and demanding legal rights for primates. The fourth section unites ecology and ethology in discussions of ethics: how we should think about and behave toward nature, and the place of wildness in a world in which space for wilderness is shrinking.

By appreciating the nonhuman world more fully, Keim writes, "I hope people will also act in ways that nourish rather than impoverish its life—which is, ultimately, the problem that needs to be solved at this Anthropocene moment, with a sixth mass extinction looming, once-common animals becoming rare, and Earth straining to support 7.5 billion people. The solution will come from a love of nature rather than chastisement or lamentation."

Author / Editor information

Brandon Keim is a freelance journalist whose work has appeared in publications including The Atlantic, WIRED, National Geographic News, Aeon, Nautilus, Scientific American Mind, The Guardian, Audubon Magazine, Grist, Mother Jones, Conservation, NOVA, and Anthropocene.

Reviews

Barbara J. King, author of How Animals Grieve:

Brandon Keim's essays beautifully stir the mind and heart. Keim writes with crystal-clear, at times lyrical language that compels us to turn away from our screens, immerse ourselves in the outdoors, and think hard about our ethical responsibilities toward the environment and other animals. This book is a joy!

Carl Safina, author of Beyond Words:

The frontier of writing about animals is the attempt to go deeper from the species to the individuals, their lives as they live them. The Eye of the Sandpiper makes that penetration a journey, so that it begins more generally and proceeds to narrow its focus, then steps back and displays to us the big picture. I wanted to speed through this book, but I kept slowing down because it was too engaging to rush. The knowledgeable Brandon Keim is as much a thinker as he is a reporter.

Provides accessible and beautifully written food for thought for ecologists.

Topics

General Interest

Frontmatter Publicly Available Download PDF	i
CONTENTS Publicly Available Download PDF	vii
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	xi
INTRODUCTION TREES OF LIFE Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	1
I DYNAMICS Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	5
II INNER LIVES Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	45
III INTERSECTIONS Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	105
IV ETHICS Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	163
REFERENCES Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	219
INDEX Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	247

(Deutsch)

Language: English
Publisher: Cornell University Press
Audience: General/trade;
Pages
- Main content: 266
Keywords: nature; ecological dynamics; inner lives of animals; ecology; ethology; ethics; science of animal intelligence; science of animal emotions; human responsibilities toward the environment

eBook

Published: June 20, 2017
ISBN: 9781501712654