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Product Details
Paperback: 352 pages
Publisher: Basic Books; First Trade Paper Edition edition (July 31, 2012)
I always enjoy books that teach me things I not only didn't know the answer to but also teach me to ask questions I didn't even know enough to ask. When I was a freshman in college in 1972 I had a science class where we discussed evolution and natural selection. It was in that class that I learned about the idea of retained traits and how a chain of natural selection can be seen by watching where traits appear first and what happens to them as natural selection works on them over tens of millions of years. I remember the question of feathers and how unsatisfying the notions then put forward were. And how did flight come about? From what?
Thor Hanson has given us a delightful and informative tour of feathers that zig zags through time, function, and use (by theropod dinosaurs, birds, and the uses other animals make of feathers). I enjoyed Hanson's stories from his field experience and what he set out to do versus what he actually learned from his work. The author also takes us around the world to meet scientists who have made important discoveries (all the feathered dinosaur fossils in China, for example) and those who have put forward theories about feather development - even opposing theories. For example, the dominant view is the present day birds descended from feathered theropods similar to those we see in the fossil record versus the BAND group (Birds Are Not Dinosaurs) who contend that there is an older ancestor that gave rise to the feathered theropods and later to the birds.
I really loved the way Hanson shows us how different birds are adapted to a certain use of feathers and configurations of feathers. How birds are insulated, waterproofed, adapted for high speed, adapted for silence when flying down on prey, and so forth.Read more ›
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29 of 29 people found the following review helpful
This is a wonderful book written by a true naturalist. Hanson includes plenty of hard science and theory, but explains it with simplicity and joy. I particularly enjoyed his anecdotes -- they added to a deeper understanding of the science, but also set a wonderful example of true curiosity and love of nature and conservation that should be awakened in us all. The only disappointment I suffered with this book was reading a great end-of-chapter paragraph, and continuing on to the next page to realize the appendices had begun and I had finished the book! I also wish the publisher had plumped for some full color illustrations -- while Hanson does an admirible job describing the color and iridescence of birds of paradise and Vegas showgirls, a few shiny pictures would have been great.
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22 of 22 people found the following review helpful
Let me start off by saying that I enjoyed reading this book. It was a fun and Hanson knows how to make the pages turn with his simple and elegant prose. However, I found the subtitle, "The Evolution of a Natural Miracle," to be a little misleading. There were a few interesting chapters dealing with feather evolution and their natural history, but the book seemed to focus more strongly on feathers' anthropological significance. That's not a bad thing, and it was quite interesting, but I thought the book would be more natural history and less about the myriad ways humans use and have used feathers in the past. Other authors, like Bernd Heinrich, tend to give more science and only tangent into things like anthropology as a short entertaining aside. I would have preferred that with Feathers.
I would lick my chops when Hanson assured that this-or-that scientific subject would be covered "in detail" in further chapters. But when the arriving at said chapters, Hansen only seemed to scratch the smooth outer surface of some real science over a few short pages; hardly "in detail".
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***** "Feathers are a multipurpose marvel. Birds, ..., use feathers for flight, insulation and courtship displays. Feathers can conceal or attract. They can be vibrantly colored without using pigment. They can store water or repel it. They can snap, whistle, hum, vibrate, boom and whine." -- Thor Hanson
Thor Hanson, a conservation biologist, presents an elaborate natural and cultural history of feathers, bringing them to our attension, not just as a vital facilitator, but as an inspiring marvel taken for granted throughout history. Oscar Wilde saying, "The true mystery of the world, is the visible, not the invisible," is fitting here. Such miracle we watch too often, almost every day, but it's mystery we don't conceive any way. Hanson masterfully explores the many functions of feathers through colorful tales of people who, like him, are fascinated by them and Smithsonian experts who can identify the species of birds by examining tiny parts of feathers they left behind.
Hanson identifies feathers, in the likeness of human hands, among those natural features that dazzle us because we can't create anything quite similar. As a kid I was enchanted with ducks staying water-proof after splashing around in a pond all day long. I humbly learned the book that birds feathers are almost perfect airfoils, presumably the lightest, most efficient insulation ever discovered. In addition we are reminded, the book teaches us a great deal about evolution, archeology, biology, paleontology, engineering science, and feathers fashion. The great science popularizer explains feathers' amazing ability to keep birds warm and cool.Read more ›
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This item: Feathers: The Evolution of a Natural Miracle
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