Vulture: Nature's Ghastly Gourmet [Hardcover]

Wayne Grady (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: November 1997

From the bald, scarlet-headed turkey vulture to the colorful king vulture with its red-rimmed eyes to the giant California condor, vultures have been reviled as disgusting, hideous scavengers that greedily feast on rotting carcasses. Here VULTURE combines a fascinating, authoritative text with 60 dramatic color photos to examine the myth and reality of this unique creature .

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

This extremely readable and graphically bold book is a real gem. Science writer and editor Wayne Grady has written a natural-history book minus the scientific jargon, without losing any scientific clout. His sources include works and interviews with vulture and condor scientists, journals from New World explorers, and early-American and contemporary naturalists. Beautiful photos of the world's various vultures provide stunning illustration to the personality of this special species; one photo shows a vulture dining on a dead water buffalo, its head buried deep in the eye socket! The book focuses most of its attention on the vulture species itself, describing the history of its maligned reputation, its evolution as a species, and its adaptation in the wake of habitat destruction. Such a discussion creates a sense of loss, but also simultaneous hope that this species may recover with some help from humans--proof offered via the condor recovery programs discussed in the final chapter. Grady clearly loves these underdogs of the avian world, and while discussing their "utility" in nature and place on the food chain, he makes the claim that we humans should remember the vultures not because they are "useful or beneficial" to us or other species, but simply because "[the vulture] exists." Some parts of Vulture do require a strong stomach, such as the descriptions of feeding habits and the photos that illustrate them, but the gross-out is part of the fun of this unique book. It is gorgeously designed and presented with humor and candor, all making for an enjoyable and compelling read and reference for bird and nature lovers alike. --Gilia Angell

Product Details

• Hardcover: 128 pages
• Publisher: Sierra Club Books for Children; 1St Edition edition (November 1997)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0871569825
• ISBN-13: 978-0871569820
• Product Dimensions: 8.6 x 6.2 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.1 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (9 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,721,014 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Questionable at best, October 6, 2000

By 

BJ Wilkinson (Kittredge, CO United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Vulture: Nature's Ghastly Gourmet (Hardcover)

As long as it sticks to New World vultures, this is a good reference. When it comes to Old World vultures, though, this guy simply doesn't know what he's writing about. He claims, for example, that the Bearded Vulture is incapable of carrying tortoises aloft (which it does regularly), and that the Asian Black Vulture is the largest vulture in Africa (it is the second smallest, out of nine species). I find it disturbing (if not surprising) that the Sierra Club would fund such a poorly researched and blatantly inaccurate volume. Anyone looking for an excellent reference on Old World vultures should check out The Vultures of Africa, by the South African Vulture Study Group.

6 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Gorgeous photo book - but no work of reference, July 23, 2001

By 

I. J. J. Nieuwland "Ilja Nieuwland" (Den Haag) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Vulture: Nature's Ghastly Gourmet (Hardcover)

Why judge a book by the standards of something it is evidently not? 'Vulture' is the most gorgeous collection of photos of these birds that I know. The book itself is beautifully laid out and designed. This is an ode to vultures rather than a comprehensive work of reference about them, and although it is regrettable that there are some errors in the text, they are few in number and are compensated by Grady's obvious love for his subject and his writing skills. But buy this book for what it is: a celebration of the beauty of a much-misunderstood group of birds.

4 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars In spite of the many shortcomings of the book I enjoyed it., January 10, 1999

By 

[e-mail] (St. Louis, Missouri) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Vulture: Nature's Ghastly Gourmet (Hardcover)

I'm disappointed in the recently published book "Vulture: Nature's Ghastly Gourmets," and must say that I'm even more disappointed that the Sierra Club Books was associated with the books publication in the USA. The format of the book is wasteful although it might be a book designers delight; but regardless of the attempt to disguise a magaszine length article as a book, it fails and demeans an interesting and worthy and important subject by essentially making the book a miniature "coffee table" book (although its weight might fully qualify it as such). The design would perhaps be more appropriate for a magazinw article than a serious book about vultures. The paper and the binding of the book is heavy and cumbersome in the hand and makes it hard to thumb through the book to find things easily. The book contains 33 color pictures of many of the Old and New Worlds vultures with additional 14 line drawings, maps and other illustrations. These illustrations are good and appropriate (where the figure of 60 dramatic illustrations came from that's mentioned in one of the reviews, I don't know). However, the illustration on page 36 is of a turkey vulture, rather than the black vulture the picture caption indicates. A fifteen kilogram lappet-faced vulture, on page 25, would not be a 10 pound vulture but rather a 33 pound one.

With the wealth of material available, both from the scientific literature and anecdotal observations, Grady could have woven together a most needed and welcome natural history of both the New and the Old World vultures. However, that's not the case with "Vulture: Nature's Ghastly Gourmet." Instead we get short glimses of some of the vultures, through mostly second hand descriptions of a few words or few lines. The book lacks an in-dephth look at these much maligned and misunderstood birds, which are some of the greatest flyers the worlds has ever known. Occasionally, when the author is most successful in his presentation, he uses personal observations and descriptions as of the vultures near his home in eastern Ontario.

Farley Mowat is not the only or the first human who has wanted to return to his next incarnation as a vulture; it was also the dream of Edward Abbey, the iconoclast and writer of the Southwest.

In spite of many shortcomings of "Vulture: Nature's Ghastly Gormet" I enjoyed reading the book and, becoming again acquainted with the marvelous sailplanes of the birdworld. And I recommend the book.