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21 of 22 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Worth the Read, June 17, 2008
This review is from: The Snake Charmer: A Life and Death in Pursuit of Knowledge (Hardcover)
The Snake Charmer is one of two books I plucked from Dr. Al Mohler's suggested reading list for dads. It is a book that is rather unlike any I've read before. It is a biographical account of the life of Joe Slowinski, one of the world's great herpetologists. Slowinski dedicated his life to studying snakes and, in particular, poisonous snakes.
In 2001, Slowinski led an expedition of biologists and botanists as they traveled through the jungles of Burma. It was there that he was bitten by a many-banded krait, the most deadly snake in Asia and one of the most deadly snakes in the world. A world away from any kind of hospital or clinic, Slowinski knew that his chances of survival were slim. It was this quote, provided by Dr. Mohler, which gave me an interest in reading the book:
"As his friends gathered around, Joe calmly explained what was happening to him. No one in the world knew more about the venom of Bungarus multicinctus than Joe Slowinski. He described the effects of a slowly deepening paralysis: The snake's venom works on several different parts of the nervous system simultaneously, blocking the nerve impulses that transmit instructions to the muscles, including those required to maintain life. There will be no pain, he told them. "First my eyelids will drop; I won't be able to hold them up." Soon he would lose the ability to speak and move his limbs, he said. Within a few hours, his respiratory system would shut down: The paralyzed central nervous system would be unable to instruct the diaphragm to breathe, causing a swift death by asphyxiation...
"As the morning wore on, Joe's physical condition deteriorated precisely as he had predicted it would. In stark contrast to the hysteria that prevailed after Joe was bitten by the cobra when he was filming with the National Geographic team, the scene at the schoolhouse in Rat Baw was wonderfully calm, even solemn. Joe lay down on his sleeping bag in his tent, with Moe Flannery and Guin Wogan lying next to him to provide human warmth and comfort. The men quietly gathered nearby. Joe asked someone to find an Ace bandage he could wrap around his right forearm to slow the traffic of blood and lymph in his hand, though by now the toxin had passed throughout his body. There was nothing more to be done except wait and see how serious the bite was."
Written by Jamie James, The Snake Charmer is a good and interesting account of the life of this man. He is a man who is hard to like--he was brash and immature and obnoxious; he was committed to understanding nature through a Darwinian lens and had only venom for creationists. Yet he was a man who loved God's creatures and who fought to understand and preserve them. Woven into the book are many interesting facts about some of God's least-understand and most-feared creatures. This book is an easy read and a perfect selection for a warm summer day outdoors.
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6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
One of the best biographies I've read, July 13, 2009
Most biographies are about people you've probably heard of already. However, Jamie James' biography of Joe Slowinski, an energetic herpetologist, is more interesting than the lives of most of our presidents and celebrities. James depicts Slowinski as a man full of energy, and his biography is also full of energy. It tracks Slowinski from his childhood finding fossils right up until his death in northern Burma. In between, James recounts raucous tales of a young scientist catching venomous snakes barehanded and traveling the world.
One of James' best tricks is to interweave short biographies of the snakes along with the biography of Slowinski. Since Slowinski's life was so intertwined these beautiful reptiles, they reveal much about the man himself. I ended up learning as much about snakes as I did about the life of a herpetologist.
I especially liked this book because I've visited some of the places Slowinski did and met some of the same Burmese scientists. I spent a week in Alaungdaw Kathapa National Park, where Slowinski conducted some of his earlier research, and can attest to Jamie Jame's depiction of northern Burma as remote and wonderful. It was a pleasure to see some of my old friends and locations mentioned in the book. This book will also appeal to readers with a general interest in Burma.
The final chapter recounting Slowinski's death is especially poignant. Slowinski was fatally bit by a Multi-Banded Krait, the very snake he was studying. James brings the doomed rescue attempt to life and highlights the bravery of Slowinski's colleagues in the field. When reading it, I recalled Steve Irwin's similarly tragic death several years ago. Slowinski's death was tragic, but reading the biography one gets the sense that he packed more into his brief life than most of us do in twice his lifespan. It made me believe, more than ever, that the light that burns half as long burns twice as bright...
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10 of 12 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Un-Putdown-able!!, June 28, 2008
This review is from: The Snake Charmer: A Life and Death in Pursuit of Knowledge (Hardcover)
When I first heard about Joe Slowinski's bizarre and tragic death by snakebite in Burma, I was fascinated and wanted to learn more. The moment I saw this book, I grabbed it---an impulse move that was a lot safer than Joe's impulsive grab into the snake bag containing the krait.
This book is riveting, being simultaneously a character study, an adventure story, a peek into the world of academic science, and a biology primer. It succeeds in all categories, making it almost impossible to put down and haunting afterwards. The author's writing is concise yet accurate and descriptive.
As a trained biologist and a herpetologist on the hobbyist level, I appreciated Joe's fascination with snakes. I am a turtle person myself (oddly, nothing much is said about the turtle people in the prestige rankings among herpetologists) but have also had a snake. I can verify that herp meetings that feature snakes have had nearly all male attendance, as Mr. James states. Snakes exert a draw for a certain type of person, exemplified in Joe Slowinski, that other reptiles don't. They have magic.
Like all possessed geniuses, Joe Slowinski would not have been easy to live with, but he contributed immensely to the life around him. It is so tragic that he did not get to fulfil his lifespan. I think the last 2 sentences in Mr. James's "Sources and Methods" afterword sums it up so well: "..it's the great gap at the end I regret most of all. It's a peculiar kind of sadness to feel sorely the loss of someone I never met."
Highly recommended, for readers of all ages and backgrounds.
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