Paperback : $31.09
"Ambitious and fascinating... [Mooallem] seamlessly blends reportage from the front lines of wildlife conservation with a lively cultural history of animals in America." --"New York Times Book Review"
Journalist Jon Mooallem has watched his little daughter's world overflow with animals butterfly pajamas, appliqued owls--while the actual world she's inheriting slides into a great storm of extinction. Half of all species could disappear by the end of the century, and scientists now concede that most of America's endangered animals will survive only if conservationists keep rigging the world around them in their favor. So Mooallem ventures into the field, often taking his daughter with him, to move beyond childlike fascination and make those creatures feel more real. "Wild Ones" is a tour through our environmental moment and the eccentric cultural history of people and wild animals in America that inflects it--from Thomas Jefferson's celebrations of early abundance to the turn-of the-last-century origins of the teddy bear to the whale-loving hippies of the 1970s. In America, "Wild Ones" discovers, wildlife has always inhabited the terrain of our imagination as much as the actual land.
The journey is framed by the stories of three modern-day endangered species: the polar bear, victimized by climate change and ogled by tourists outside a remote northern town; the little-known Lange's metalmark butterfly, foundering on a shred of industrialized land near San Francisco; and the whooping crane as it's led on a months-long migration by costumed men in ultralight airplanes. The wilderness that "Wild Ones" navigates is a scrappy, disorderly place where amateur conservationists do grueling, sometimes preposterous-looking work; where a marketer maneuvers to control the polar bear's image while Martha Stewart turns up to film those beasts for her show on the Hallmark Channel. Our most comforting ideas about nature unravel. In their place, Mooallem forges a new and affirming vision of the human animal and the wild ones as kindred creatures on an imperfect planet.
With propulsive curiosity and searing wit, and without the easy moralizing and nature worship of environmental journalism's older guard, "Wild Ones" merges reportage, science, and history into a humane and endearing meditation on what it means to live in, and bring a life into, a broken world.
--And don't miss the album based on the book: WILD ONES by Black Prairie. Digital release on May 14; physical release on June 11--
"Ambitious and fascinating... [Mooallem] seamlessly blends reportage from the front lines of wildlife conservation with a lively cultural history of animals in America." --"New York Times Book Review"
Journalist Jon Mooallem has watched his little daughter's world overflow with animals butterfly pajamas, appliqued owls--while the actual world she's inheriting slides into a great storm of extinction. Half of all species could disappear by the end of the century, and scientists now concede that most of America's endangered animals will survive only if conservationists keep rigging the world around them in their favor. So Mooallem ventures into the field, often taking his daughter with him, to move beyond childlike fascination and make those creatures feel more real. "Wild Ones" is a tour through our environmental moment and the eccentric cultural history of people and wild animals in America that inflects it--from Thomas Jefferson's celebrations of early abundance to the turn-of the-last-century origins of the teddy bear to the whale-loving hippies of the 1970s. In America, "Wild Ones" discovers, wildlife has always inhabited the terrain of our imagination as much as the actual land.
The journey is framed by the stories of three modern-day endangered species: the polar bear, victimized by climate change and ogled by tourists outside a remote northern town; the little-known Lange's metalmark butterfly, foundering on a shred of industrialized land near San Francisco; and the whooping crane as it's led on a months-long migration by costumed men in ultralight airplanes. The wilderness that "Wild Ones" navigates is a scrappy, disorderly place where amateur conservationists do grueling, sometimes preposterous-looking work; where a marketer maneuvers to control the polar bear's image while Martha Stewart turns up to film those beasts for her show on the Hallmark Channel. Our most comforting ideas about nature unravel. In their place, Mooallem forges a new and affirming vision of the human animal and the wild ones as kindred creatures on an imperfect planet.
With propulsive curiosity and searing wit, and without the easy moralizing and nature worship of environmental journalism's older guard, "Wild Ones" merges reportage, science, and history into a humane and endearing meditation on what it means to live in, and bring a life into, a broken world.
--And don't miss the album based on the book: WILD ONES by Black Prairie. Digital release on May 14; physical release on June 11--
Jon Mooallem has been a contributing writer to The New York
Times Magazine since 2006 and is a writer at large for Pop-Up
Magazine, the live magazine in San Francisco. He’s also contributed
to This American Life, The New Yorker, Harper’s, Wired, and many
other magazines. He and his family live in San Francisco.
www.JonMooallem.com
***A New York Times Notable Book of 2013***
"[An] ambitious and fascinating first book… [Mooallem] seamlessly
blends reportage from the front lines of wildlife conservation with
a lively cultural history of animals in America, telling stories of
people past and present whose concern for animals makes them act in
ways that are sometimes unexpected, sometimes heroic, and
occasionally absurd."—New York Times Book Review
"A thoughtful parable of Americans’ complicated relations with
conservationists and the wildlife they protect."—The New Yorker
"Intelligent and highly nuanced… This book may bring tears to your
eyes. If so, they will be drawn out by the tragedy of what we have
done and the all-too-often pathetic efforts to turn back the clock.
But read through the tears, and you will find yourself more
informed, more prepared to make a difference. Mooallem has done
those of us who care deeply about nature and wildlife a favor,
leaving us justifiably off balance but putting us in a better
position to move beyond hubris to pragmatic solutions."—San
Francisco Chronicle
"An engaging nature/environment book that goes beyond simple-minded
sloganeering."—Kirkus
"Wild Ones heightens one’s awareness of the precipitous position of
so many of our animal species, but it’s also filled with curiosity
and hope. The men and women that Mooallem tails are dreamers, but
you wind up rooting for them to keep on dreaming."—Smithsonian
"There is, in short, ridiculously lots to love about Jon Mooallem’s
Wild Ones—starting with its thoughtful and troubling observation
that our increasingly extravagant effort at species conservation is
a corollary to, as much as a solution for, our habit of rendering
wild animals extinct."—New York Magazine
"Mooallem argues conservation is and always has been about
fulfilling people’s need for nostalgic wildness, however contrived
and fictitious it may be. Every generation strives to return the
Earth to some idealized former state. Although his journey is
sobering, Mooallem’s conclusion is upbeat: Even small conservation
victories matter."—Discover
"Mooallem manages to pinpoint something peculiar yet poignant about
being human, and as a result, reading his pieces often feels like
being tricked by an approachable wink masking a sharp jab to the
gut... Be prepared to be surprise-gutted."—East Bay Express
"A clear-eyed look at our coy relationship with endangered
animals."—Nature
"If I could write this review entirely in smiley faces and majestic
animal emojis, I would: Wild Ones is easily one of the best books
I've come across this year. It's more readable than most novels,
stuffed with more fascinating, offbeat trivia than the last three
issues of The New Yorker combined….It's incredibly well-researched,
relevant, challenging stuff."—Portland Mercury
"'If we choose to help [polar bears] survive,' Mooallem writes, 'it
will require a kind of narrow, hands-on management—like getting out
there and feeding them.' Among a lot of environmentalists, those
are fighting words. All respect to Mooallem for having the guts to
say them.”—Outside Magazine
"This book is dense with both thought and fact… It is written with
a vernacularly light touch, shot through with compassion and wit,
not to mention open amazement, the only apt response to the story
of our monumental hubris."—The Daily Beast
"Mooallem argues that by focusing on the animals themselves, we are
overlooking the point of the Endangered Species Act, which stressed
the paramount importance of ecosystems—a far more difficult thing
to save than a species. He strives for the big picture here and
gently guides readers through what ultimately becomes a poignant
tribute to all who try to make the world a better place. This is a
wise approach to a troubling subject, and Mooallem’s words do give
us something to hold on to as we continue to struggle with what it
means to save the planet."—Booklist
"It is impossible to express, within the tiny game-park confines of
a back cover, how amazing I find this book. I love it line by
perfect, carefully crafted line, and I love it for the freshness
and intelligent humanity of its ideas. As literary nonfiction, as
essay, as reportage, Wild Ones is, to my mind, about as good as
writing gets."—Mary Roach, author of Stiff and Gulp
"I love Jon Mooallem and I love animals, but this book is even
better than the sum of its parts. Mooallem makes a persuasive case
that wild animals are America's cultural heritage—our Sistine
Chapel and our Great Books—and the story he tells is an archetypal
American one. Even as the animals are being destroyed by
unthinking, unconscious corporate forces, they are also being
rescued through the tremendous energy and ingenuity of individuals,
men and women who wear whooping-crane costumes, cohabitate with
dolphins, and encourage condors to ejaculate on their heads. Wild
Ones made me proud to be American."—Elif Batuman, author of The
Possessed
"Part harrowing arctic adventure, part crazy airborne travelogue,
and often funny family trek, Wild Ones shows us that while saving
species might be of debatable value to some, it is maybe in our
genes, and definitely in our hearts. Mooallem's analysis of our
various environmental movements has the breadth and penetrating
clarity of Michael Pollan, but more importantly he makes us wonder
even more about a world that is in desperate need of more
wonder."—Robert Sullivan, author of Rats and My American
Revolution
"During the course of his three expeditions, Jon Mooallem collects
in the specimen jars of his elegant paragraphs enough ironies,
curiosities, insights, and revelations—enough life, wild and
otherwise—to stock a mind-altering museum, one unlike any other, in
which Martha Stewart has wandered into the polar bear exhibit, and
the Hall of North American Animals turns out also to be a hall of
mirrors. With Mooallem as your nature guide, you won't look at wild
animals—or at Homo americanus—quite the same way again."—Donovan
Hohn, author of Moby-Duck
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