Customer Reviews

Ravensong: A Natural And Fabulous History Of Ravens And Crows

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

when I first began reading this book. I expected that this book was going to be a mix of scientific report and anecdotal evidence illustrating the intelligence of ravens. I was wrong.

As I began to read through Feher-Elston's story, I was annoyed by her persistence in discussing religion and spirituality in connection with the raven. However, as I read on, I found myself more and more reluctant to set this book down. Before I knew it, I was reading on voraciously, completely consumed by the story.

Feher-Elston very successfully weaves together science, history, and spirituality, guiding the reader through many different and equally important perspectives on these birds. Through her exploration of the importance of Raven in Native American religion, the ghost dance, and creation stories, it feels as if one somehow begins to grasp the gravity of this bird through the wisdom of ages of man.

Folded into this story of history and legend, are the modern scientific truths of these birds. The author offers the reader the benefit of humanity's whole history of observations of these birds, and layers it with modern scientific knowledge. Through this book, the reader is left with a greater scientific and emotional understanding of the both the corvid, and of all of man's hopes and fears that it embodies.

One of the best integrated treatments of Nature, Catherine Feher-Elston's Ravensong: A Natural and Fabulous History of Ravens and Crows,is at last available to a greater public through Trcher/Penguin. This lyrical treatment of ravens, crows and their relationships with people and other animals is fascinating and beautiful. Anyone who reads this work will never look a crows and ravens in exactly the same way again. This is a great book, and anyone with a love of birds, animals, science, literature of mythology will enjoy it.

This is a good book for people who want to learn about ravens and crows. For more knowledgable readers, there's not much new information, but it's a very nicely written book. The black and white illustrations are special, however, and the book makes a good addition to any bird library for that reason--they beautifully capture the 'crowness' of these magnificient birds.

I have had the pleasure of owning this book for at least 16 years. I found this book to be written with devotion and reverance for these great and intelligent sky masters.

This is really a good book! It brings a corvid right into your life by the way it is written. I have interacted with the same three crows for several years and I could truly appreciate how close you are brought to such an elusive and dignified creature.

I really wanted to like this one. But I also needed it to be either more literary or more anthropological. The illustrations and page design are beautiful. But Feher-Elston's text is annoyingly repetitive, with even less actual information than you might expect from a large-type book. Where I was hoping for well-retold stories about Raven/Crow, she gives a few, not particularly imaginative synopses. Where she might have focused on Native American myths (her strong point, if she has one), she throws in psuedo-information about Raven in other cultures, without really giving you any stories. Where you really want her to just tell the Raven story, she throws in Native American history with only a tangential relationship to Raven/Crow. Aaaargh. I can and have read Original Peoples history elsewhere. I can and have read anthropological accounts of shamans elsewhere. It's called Ravensong. Wouldn't it be nice if it collected songs about ravens?

This is a book by someone who obviously loves corvids but is unequipped for realizing the task she set herself. The "fabulous" part of the book deals with old world history in two sentences, spending the rest of the space on folksy retellings of stories from Native American traditions. The "natural" part of the history is anecdotal, sentimentalized and inadequate. Other works serve far better for each of this one's stated purposes.

Not a book to read if you are seeking more science than legend.