Night Life: Nature from Dusk to Dawn [Paperback]

Diana Kappel-Smith (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: September 1, 1996

Journey with Diana Kappel-Smith into the nocturnal world of wild North America. Night Life combines scientific descriptions and personal reflections on creatures ranging from spiders and snakes to large predators of the northern Plains.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

For her study of nocturnal creatures, Kappel-Smith ( Wintering ) selected disparate environments at different seasons. Seeking information on predators, she walked trap lines during a North Dakota winter; in Hawaii, she sampled night diving on a coral reef, explored lava caves and looked for spiders in a rain forest. At the start of the rainy season, Kappel-Smith journeyed to the Arizona desert to observe kangaroo rats and spadefoot toads. She trekked suburban Connecticut countryside in springtime and joined game wardens on patrol in the Louisiana bayous. The result is an captivating combination of natural history, personal impressions of people and places, and interviews with scientists. Illustrated.
Copyright 1989 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Library Journal

Science writer Kappel-Smith set out to discover what it is that wildlife does while most of us sleep, and from that ambition, she has fashioned a fascinating book. Propelled by her enthusiasm for her work and her love and respect for nature, she reveals much about wildlife at night. Her book is divided into five chapters, each describing a different region: Arizona in August; North Dakota in December; Hawaii in January; Connecticut in April; and Louisiana in June. While exploring these areas, Kappel-Smith travels with wildlife experts and discovers an astonishing array of nocturnal animals--coyotes, octopi, bats, and even human poachers. Her eye is always keen and her observations poetic and honest. Anyone who reads this gem of a book is unlikely to view the night in quite the same way again.
- Randy Dykhuis, OCLC, Dublin, Ohio
Copyright 1989 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 312 pages
• Publisher: University of Arizona Press (September 1, 1996)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0816517029
• ISBN-13: 978-0816517022
• Product Dimensions: 8.2 x 5.5 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 15.2 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,758,494 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Unraveling the illusions of the dark, November 30, 2006

By 

Harry Eagar (Maui) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

'Night Life' is the result of one of those why-didn't-anybody-think-of-this-before ideas?
'Fear of the the night is natural to our species,' writes Diana Kappel-Smith, but we are definitely in the minority. Thus, if one wants to really know the natural surroundings, it is necessary to check out the dark. One is reminded of the pioneering naturalist Louis Agassiz' remark about his holiday: 'I spent the summer traveling. I got halfway across my backyard.'
Kappel-Smith, a translator of Spanish poetry and author of one previous natural history book, 'Wintering,' visited Hawaii, met some veteran University of Hawaii biologists and took them out for a night dive -- their first. Kappel-Smith's simple idea proved powerful. 'Once you've begun to unravel the illusions of the dark, you have to go on.'
Of course, although her U.H. biologists had never ventured onto the reef after dark, that doesn't mean nobody had. 'Night Life' only dips a toe in the complexity of animal behavior; its novelty is in a way of looking, not in the presentation of new information.
Early on, visiting the Arizona desert during the rainy season and North Dakota in the winter, Kappel-Smith tries too hard to create an arresting phrase, but as she delves deeper into the night, her writing sharpens. By the time she reaches Hawaii, she is capable of describing 'molten lava flowing downhill, flecked with crusty dark like a dragon's tongue' and cave animals as 'knots of ivory.'
By the time she returns to her girlhood home in Connecticut, she has relaxed sufficiently to write with great charm of ordinary things, of how she 'can taste the woodland underfoot by the sound of the leaves.'
As Agassiz knew, it is not necessary to safari in exotic places to encounter the mysteries of nature. Twenty acres of 'suburban countryside is richer in wildlife than many a chunk of virgin wilderness.'