"The tales tell that Charles the Second feared ‘Britain will fall’ if the ravens ever left the Tower of London. Yet the truth is that they arrived in Victorian times as props in gory tales for tourists. The legend began in 1944 when a raven spotted bombers over London. But the ravens’ past has far more high drama. From the plains of the North American Indians to the Arctic tundra, all the way to the Tower of London, they have been symbols of cruelty, of survival through adversity, and a loveable icon. Boria Sax shows how our attitudes to the raven and to the natural world in general have changed enormously over the centuries. By describing the distinct place of this special bird in Anglo-Saxon culture, he shows how blurred the lines between myth and history can be. This is a unique and brilliantly readable story of the entwined lives of people and animals."
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Editorial Reviews
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"Boria Sax is a likeable Writer...and his diligent research has not only illuminated the origins of one of Britain's most famous myths, but also amply demonstrated ravens' 'uncanny ability not only to summon old tales but to constantly generate new ones'"
--Times Literary Supplement, Feb. 27, 2012
"Quirky and absorbing."
--Publishers Weekly
"The author delves into the true history and cultural importance of these massive corvids. It's a lively, entertaining tale, with a few grisly details from real events."
--Anna Sanders, Audubon Magazine, July-August 2012
"Enter Boria Sax, the veritable Ace Ventura of contemporary academia.... The author successfully charts our changing relationship with the enigmatic birds throughout the ages."
--Darren Carlaw, The New York Journal of Books, 6/5/2012
"Boria Sax presents a fascinating delve into the raven and its relation to humanity, with a special focus on the legends of the Tower of London. 'City of Ravens' is a must for anyone curious about the curious bird, very much highly recommended."
--Midwest Book Review, August 31, 2012."
"...we now have a fabulous little book City of Ravens by Boria Sax to keep us thinking. This extended essay tells the story of the ravens at the Tower in an enjoyable and often exciting manner."
--Beachcombing's Bizzare History Blog, Oct. 31, 2011
--Times Literary Supplement, Feb. 27, 2012
"Both a delight and a profound illumination of the subject . . . with unexpected and fascinating conclusions."
--Esther Woolfson, author of Corvus"A wonderful contribution to the modern history and mythology of one of the world''s greatest cities."
--Ronald Hutton, Commissioner of English Heritage"Boria Sax traces the history of the ravens in the Tower of London with accurate scholarship and engaging stories."
--John Marzluff, co-author of In the Company of Crows and Ravens"Quirky and absorbing."
--Publishers Weekly
"The author delves into the true history and cultural importance of these massive corvids. It's a lively, entertaining tale, with a few grisly details from real events."
--Anna Sanders, Audubon Magazine, July-August 2012
"Enter Boria Sax, the veritable Ace Ventura of contemporary academia.... The author successfully charts our changing relationship with the enigmatic birds throughout the ages."
--Darren Carlaw, The New York Journal of Books, 6/5/2012
"Boria Sax presents a fascinating delve into the raven and its relation to humanity, with a special focus on the legends of the Tower of London. 'City of Ravens' is a must for anyone curious about the curious bird, very much highly recommended."
--Midwest Book Review, August 31, 2012."
"...we now have a fabulous little book City of Ravens by Boria Sax to keep us thinking. This extended essay tells the story of the ravens at the Tower in an enjoyable and often exciting manner."
--Beachcombing's Bizzare History Blog, Oct. 31, 2011
About the Author
Boria Sax is an award-winning author and lecturer. Two of his scholarly books, IAnimals in the Third Reich: Pets, Scapegoats, and the Holocaust and The Mythical Zoo: An Encyclopedia of Animals in Myth, Legend, and Literature, have been named "outstanding academic titles of the year" by the journal Choice. His books have been translated into French, Japanese, Korean, Turkish, Chinese, Japanese, Russian, and Czech. Boria Sax lives in White Plains, New York. Visit boriasax.com
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More About the Author
Our stories begin long before we are born, and contain more than we can ever know. I have told the story of my early years in the forthcoming book Stealing Fire: A Boyhood in the Shadow of Atomic Espionage. But when I look back, I find myself asking, "Was that really me?"
I first became interested in the literature of animals around the end of the 1980's, not terribly long after I had obtained my PhD in German and intellectual history. I was feeling frustrated in my search for an academic job and even study of literature. By accident, I came across an encyclopedia of animals that had been written in the early nineteenth century. There, without any self-consciousness, was a new world of romance and adventure, filled with turkeys that spoke Arabic, beavers that build like architects, and dogs that solve murders. Within a few months, I had junked my previous research and devoted my studies to these texts.
Today, I shudder how nervy the switch was for a destitute young scholar, who, despite one book and several articles, had not managed to obtain any steady job except mopping floors. But soon I had managed to publish two books on animals in literature, The Frog King (1990) and The Parliament of Animals (1992). Around 1995, I founded Nature in Legend and Story (NILAS, Inc.), an organization that combines storytelling and scholarship. It was initially, a sort of rag-tag band of intellectual adventurers who loved literature but could not find a niche in the scholarly world. We put together a few conferences, which generated a lot of excitement among the few who attended, but little notice in academia or in what they sometimes call "the real world."
From fables and anecdotes, I moved to mythology, and published The Serpent and the Swan (1997), a study of animal bride tales from around the world. This was followed by many further publications including an examination of the darker side of animal studies, Animals in the Third Reich (2000), and a sort of compendium, The Mythical Zoo (2002), and a cultural history of corvids entitled Crow (2003). My most recent book is City of Ravens: London, its Tower and its Famous Ravens (2011), and Imaginary Animals will be published soon by Reaktion Books in London.
When I embarked on the study of animals in myth and literature, even graduate students did not have to mention a few dozen books just to show that they had read them. In barely more than a couple decades, the literature on human-animal relations has grown enormously in both quantity and sophistication. NILAS, I am proud to say, has become a well established organization, which has sponsored two highly successful conferences together with ISAZ.
But as the study of animals, what I like to call "totemic literature," becomes more of a standard feature of academic programs, I fear that something may be lost. It is now just a little too easy to discourse about the "social construction" and the "transgression" of "boundaries" between animals and human beings. Even as I admire the subtlety of such analysis, I sometimes find myself thinking, "So what?"
Having been there close to the beginning, part of my role is now to preserve some the sensuous immediacy, with that filled the study of animals in literature when it was still a novelty. That sort of "poetry" is not simply a luxury in our intellectual pursuits. With such developments as cloning, genetic engineering, and the massive destruction of natural habitats, we face crises so unprecedented that traditional philosophies, from utilitarianism to deep ecology, can offer us precious little guidance. The possibilities are so overwhelming, that we hardly even know what questions to ask. But neither, I am sure, did the fugitive who once encountered a mermaid in the middle of the woods.
Boria Sax
I first became interested in the literature of animals around the end of the 1980's, not terribly long after I had obtained my PhD in German and intellectual history. I was feeling frustrated in my search for an academic job and even study of literature. By accident, I came across an encyclopedia of animals that had been written in the early nineteenth century. There, without any self-consciousness, was a new world of romance and adventure, filled with turkeys that spoke Arabic, beavers that build like architects, and dogs that solve murders. Within a few months, I had junked my previous research and devoted my studies to these texts.
Today, I shudder how nervy the switch was for a destitute young scholar, who, despite one book and several articles, had not managed to obtain any steady job except mopping floors. But soon I had managed to publish two books on animals in literature, The Frog King (1990) and The Parliament of Animals (1992). Around 1995, I founded Nature in Legend and Story (NILAS, Inc.), an organization that combines storytelling and scholarship. It was initially, a sort of rag-tag band of intellectual adventurers who loved literature but could not find a niche in the scholarly world. We put together a few conferences, which generated a lot of excitement among the few who attended, but little notice in academia or in what they sometimes call "the real world."
From fables and anecdotes, I moved to mythology, and published The Serpent and the Swan (1997), a study of animal bride tales from around the world. This was followed by many further publications including an examination of the darker side of animal studies, Animals in the Third Reich (2000), and a sort of compendium, The Mythical Zoo (2002), and a cultural history of corvids entitled Crow (2003). My most recent book is City of Ravens: London, its Tower and its Famous Ravens (2011), and Imaginary Animals will be published soon by Reaktion Books in London.
When I embarked on the study of animals in myth and literature, even graduate students did not have to mention a few dozen books just to show that they had read them. In barely more than a couple decades, the literature on human-animal relations has grown enormously in both quantity and sophistication. NILAS, I am proud to say, has become a well established organization, which has sponsored two highly successful conferences together with ISAZ.
But as the study of animals, what I like to call "totemic literature," becomes more of a standard feature of academic programs, I fear that something may be lost. It is now just a little too easy to discourse about the "social construction" and the "transgression" of "boundaries" between animals and human beings. Even as I admire the subtlety of such analysis, I sometimes find myself thinking, "So what?"
Having been there close to the beginning, part of my role is now to preserve some the sensuous immediacy, with that filled the study of animals in literature when it was still a novelty. That sort of "poetry" is not simply a luxury in our intellectual pursuits. With such developments as cloning, genetic engineering, and the massive destruction of natural habitats, we face crises so unprecedented that traditional philosophies, from utilitarianism to deep ecology, can offer us precious little guidance. The possibilities are so overwhelming, that we hardly even know what questions to ask. But neither, I am sure, did the fugitive who once encountered a mermaid in the middle of the woods.
Boria Sax
Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
5 of 6 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars
WHAT AND INFORMATIVE AND FUN READ THIS ONE IS...I know a lot more now than when I started it.
July 5, 2012
Format:Hardcover
Every so often, we as readers, come across a work that fits, if not all, them the majority of our reading needs and we consider ourselves lucky and are completely delighted. I am a reader of history; not a historian mind you, but a life long reader of history and biographies; it is my favorite genre. I am also a collector and something of a student of folktales, fairytales and myths. I am also an avid birder and love all things about birds. I also love a well written and well researched book. "City of Ravens," by Boria Sax has hit all of these marks and hit them well. Good grief - had the author thrown in a bit about golf and trout fishing I would have been in complete bliss!
All of my life I have heard of the near mythical Ravens who inhabit the tower of London. Many of the stories I have read, both directly and indirectly via references to them in many other works have all had a ring of truth about them. Now I never actually believed that if the ravens left the tower that England would fall, but it was one of those nice myths or stories that struck me and delighted me much like the Arthurian stories I grew up with. Were these stories true? Were the origins of the magnificent birds factual as referenced via common lore? Did they play a rather gruesome and bloody part in that tower's infamous history? To be quite honest with you, I never questions the "facts" until I read this work.
Boria Sax holds a PhD in Intellectual History and German. He specializes in cultural history. Sax, as I discovered while reading this work, is also a fine writer and story teller. Now don't take me wrong. The work being reviewed here is more than a bit scholarly in nature but the author has that rare ability, so often absent in academics, of creating a book that is extremely readable for people like me who by no stretch of the imagination is an academic. An amazing amount of minute, conscientious and accurate research went into this book and everything the author states can be backed up and backed up well. The reader may not be happy with some of the conclusions the author came up with, but I am quite sure there are few, if any, who will be able to challenge these findings and conclusions. This guy has done his homework!
In reading of the Tower Ravens, we are also treated to a good bit of English history. The story of Bran is interwoven throughout this work and the author covers time periods ranging from the ancient Celts through the middle ages, WWII to the present. I was rather amazed at the information Sax was able to pack into a relatively small book. Ravens are fascinating creatures, and are a part of cultures found around the world and of different eras. I have read several works addressing this tribe of birds and I must tell you that this work added much to my knowledge base...I am very grateful for that.
This work contains an excellent bibliography, is well footnoted, contains chapter summaries and there are several very nicely done photographs to go along with the written text.
This is one of those books that will most certainly get a second and quite likely third reading from me...yes, it is that good. Anyone who has the slightest interest in the subjects I mention in the first paragraph will most certainly glean much information here and experience great reading pleasure.
Disclosure of Material Connection: I received this book free for an honest review. An honest review you got. I was not required to write a positive review. The opinions I have expressed are my own. I am disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission's 16 CFR, Part 255: "Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising and Amazon reviewer guidelines.
Don Blankenship
The Ozarks
All of my life I have heard of the near mythical Ravens who inhabit the tower of London. Many of the stories I have read, both directly and indirectly via references to them in many other works have all had a ring of truth about them. Now I never actually believed that if the ravens left the tower that England would fall, but it was one of those nice myths or stories that struck me and delighted me much like the Arthurian stories I grew up with. Were these stories true? Were the origins of the magnificent birds factual as referenced via common lore? Did they play a rather gruesome and bloody part in that tower's infamous history? To be quite honest with you, I never questions the "facts" until I read this work.
Boria Sax holds a PhD in Intellectual History and German. He specializes in cultural history. Sax, as I discovered while reading this work, is also a fine writer and story teller. Now don't take me wrong. The work being reviewed here is more than a bit scholarly in nature but the author has that rare ability, so often absent in academics, of creating a book that is extremely readable for people like me who by no stretch of the imagination is an academic. An amazing amount of minute, conscientious and accurate research went into this book and everything the author states can be backed up and backed up well. The reader may not be happy with some of the conclusions the author came up with, but I am quite sure there are few, if any, who will be able to challenge these findings and conclusions. This guy has done his homework!
In reading of the Tower Ravens, we are also treated to a good bit of English history. The story of Bran is interwoven throughout this work and the author covers time periods ranging from the ancient Celts through the middle ages, WWII to the present. I was rather amazed at the information Sax was able to pack into a relatively small book. Ravens are fascinating creatures, and are a part of cultures found around the world and of different eras. I have read several works addressing this tribe of birds and I must tell you that this work added much to my knowledge base...I am very grateful for that.
This work contains an excellent bibliography, is well footnoted, contains chapter summaries and there are several very nicely done photographs to go along with the written text.
This is one of those books that will most certainly get a second and quite likely third reading from me...yes, it is that good. Anyone who has the slightest interest in the subjects I mention in the first paragraph will most certainly glean much information here and experience great reading pleasure.
Disclosure of Material Connection: I received this book free for an honest review. An honest review you got. I was not required to write a positive review. The opinions I have expressed are my own. I am disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission's 16 CFR, Part 255: "Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising and Amazon reviewer guidelines.
Don Blankenship
The Ozarks
3 of 4 people found the following review helpful
Format:Hardcover
This book provides a detailed look at the ravens of the Tower of London, their history and mythology. Sax is an author and cultural historian. In this book, he relates his investigation into the mythology of the ravens of the Tower of London. According to Tower tradition, the Crown and the Tower will fail if the ravens should leave the tower; thus, the ravens have been protected at the tower by royal decree since the time of King Charles II. Something in this story didn't sound entirely right to Sax--why would King Charles II have such an interest in ravens, in these specific ravens? Sax began looking into the historical documents, searching archives and interviewing the raven keepers at the Tower in order to understand more about this myth. In doing so, he learned much about the traditional role of ravens in London as scavengers, and their possible role at the tower following executions. But in his search of documents, he could find very little evidence, or none at all, of the myth that tied the fortunes of the country to the presence of ravens at the tower that appeared in print before the very last part of the Nineteenth Century. In addition to his historical investigations, Sax also considers the legend of Bran, an interesting bit of Celtic mythology relating to ravens, and describes the role of ravens as watchbirds during the World War II bombings of London. The book includes an extensive bibliography, and original sources are cited through endnotes.
This book is quite interesting, both for the background information it provides about these famous ravens, and for the historical investigation itself. The issue of how traditions and myths arise, their motivation and spread, can be quite mysterious. In this book, Sax provides a fascinating account of his study of the history of the Tower ravens, one that reads almost like a mystery novel, an informative and compelling page turner.
This book is quite interesting, both for the background information it provides about these famous ravens, and for the historical investigation itself. The issue of how traditions and myths arise, their motivation and spread, can be quite mysterious. In this book, Sax provides a fascinating account of his study of the history of the Tower ravens, one that reads almost like a mystery novel, an informative and compelling page turner.
2 of 3 people found the following review helpful
Format:Hardcover
The mere mention of ravens is enough to conjure images of darkness and death. Boria Sax's book "City of Ravens" helps to rectify their reputation. This magical book traces the legend and lore of ravens as it tackles the mystery of how they first came to reside in the Tower of London. Along the way, the bird undergoes a transformation from that of despised scavenger to much loved tourist attraction. There is an ancient prophesy that Britain will fall if the ravens ever leave the Tower of London. May the ravens long enjoy their reign.
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