The Life of the Skies (Hardcover)

~ (Author) "As a rule I tend to avoid activities that require snake-proof boots..." (more)
Key Phrases: diminished thing, Central Park, New York, Walden Pond (more...)

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Starred Review. In this eloquent book, Rosen—a novelist and editorial director of Nextbook, which promotes Jewish culture and literature—meditates on the fact that technology enables us to preserve wildlife and at the same time contributes to its demise. He laments that no sooner had he discovered bird-watching than he realized that nature has become a diminished thing, as Robert Frost put it in his poem The Oven Bird. Everywhere he looks—from a Louisiana swamp to the Israeli desert—he finds a paradox: we are attempting to preserve nature at the same time that we are destroying it. Cars, trains and planes, Rosen writes, have enabled us to find the birds of America for ourselves, even as these inventions have contributed to the fragmentation that endangers them.Birds sing back to us an aspect of ourselves, Rosen says, harking back to Audubon, and he confesses that this is why he came to bird-watching, making it even more poignant that so many birds are close to disappearing forever. Rosen's wide-ranging intellect (he is also the author of The Talmud and the Internet) flits gracefully from nature to history to poetry, and gentle meditations can be spiked with barbs ( 'Collecting' is the ornithological euphemism for killing). This beautifully written book is an elegy to the human condition at a time when wilderness is becoming a thing of the past. Illus. (Feb.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Review

“Life of the Skies is more than just a bird book. It is a thoughtful and often unexpected exploration of birding through the lens of history, literature and loss—the process, as author Jonathan Rosen says, of loving a diminished but still seductive world.” —Scott Weidensaul, author of Living on the Wind and Of a Feather “Birding is so much more than just outdoor recreation. Its sources are woven into history and legend, and its pleasures are ultimately spiritual. Jonathan Rosen has captured all this to deliver a rare and beautiful piece of literature.” —Edward O. Wilson, University Research Professor Emeritus, Harvard University, and Honorary Curator in Entomology at the Museum of Comparative Zoology “I can scarcely tell a scarlet tanager from Scarlett O’Hara, but The Life of the Skies had me transfixed from the first page. Rosen writes with astounding insight, wit, and compassion. The story he tells here is the best kind of odyssey, an outward journey that ends up highlighting the beauty and daring that live inside of us.” —Stephen Dubner, co-author of Freakonomics “Entertaining and compelling, full of natural wonders and wonderful story-telling. In this unshowy, profound, engaging book, Rosen uses attention to birds— the only wild creatures most of us ever see, as he points out— as an occasion to meditate on art and wilderness, science and impulse, human nature and the nature of our precarious world.” —Robert Pinsky

“Like millions of people, I take a curious pleasure in staring at birds, but never knew why. Thanks to The Life of the Skies, I now realize that I am not just indulging a compulsion to classify. In this illuminating and charming book, Rosen shows us the poetry, the philosophy, and the history—natural and human—of the strange modern pastime of bird-watching. You’ll never a see a waxwing in the same way again.”  —Steven Pinker, Johnstone Professor, Harvard University, and author of The Language Instinct, How the Mind Works, and The Stuff of Thought

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 336 pages
• Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux; 1st edition (February 19, 2008)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0374186308
• ISBN-13: 978-0374186302
• Product Dimensions: 8.4 x 5.6 x 1.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 14.4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (11 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #300,581 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

22 of 25 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A book for everyone, March 5, 2008

By	Foodie69 (Miami, Florida) - See all my reviews

"A Life of the Skies" is a beautifully written account of birding, but it's actually about so much more. It's really about being human, and the way we relate to the natural world, how we effect the natural world even as we observe it. I am not a birder myself, but I was captivated by this book from the first page. Jonathan Rosen is a very compelling writer, and this is a perfect book for someone who wants to understand the relationship between modern life and the natural world.

11 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A book for bird watchers and those who care about this planet, April 27, 2008

By	ShiraSongbird - See all my reviews

I often get a book from our local library and then decide after reading it or reading part of it whether or not to purchase the book. This is definitely a book to purchase. It has a vast amount of information written in a poetic and beautiful manner. One reviewer wrote about a few grammatical errors. That person certainly lost the point of the book which was to make you appreciate nature and life in general.

This is a fascinating book but also hard to describe. Rosen writes about so many things besides birding.
(Birding is serious birdwatching). He brings in some Jewish content in his book and a few chapters are about birding in Israel.

Rosen also spends quite a bit of time writing about birding in Central Park in NY City and looking for the Ivory Billed Woodpecker in Arkansas. There are many quotes in the book from various poets and writers and early American birders such as Audubon and many others.

Here is a little quote from the end of the book just to give you a little flavor of the writing of Rosen.

" Looking for the Ivory-billed woodpecker, I inevitably found myself jotting in my notebook "I.B. Woodpecker," linking the bird to I. B. Singer, like Sutzkever a great Yiddish writer steeped in loss, obsessed with diminishment and survival. As if the bird I sought kept a culture alive in its song, though it doesn't even sing; it drums and makes a thin tinny ank, a language that remains haunting and obscure.

But birdwatching is a world of small gestures that reflect larger worlds. My favorite place to watch birds in Central Park is Tanner's Spring, a humble little area not even located in the park's wooded interior but just off Central Park West, a hundred yards north of the Diana Ross playground..."

Anyway, I loved the book, being a birdwatcher and a Jew myself.

15 of 17 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Where the Wild Things Are, March 31, 2008

By	Julie Neal "The Complete Walt Disney World" (Sanibel Island, Fla.) - See all my reviews (TOP 50 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)

This book spoke to me. I've been a birder for over 20 years now, and after reading "The Life of the Skies" I understand at last why I enjoy it so much.

Author Rosen's central view is that humans need to affiliate with the natural world to be happy and fulfilled: "More and more I realize that to be bored with birds is to be bored with life. I say birds rather than some generic `nature,' because birds are what remain to us." He makes the point that birds are the only truly wild creatures most of us see.

Many of the pages include interesting history. The chapter about the ivory-billed woodpecker describes how after Alexander Wilson, the father of American ornithology, captured one in the 18th century, he noted that its cries sounded exactly like "the violent crying of a young child."

A must for anyone who loves birds, "The Life of the Skies" will make its reader want to go outside and look up.