'In Wild Thoughts from Wild Places, award-winning journalist David Quammen reminds us why he has become one of our most beloved science and nature writers. If you enjoy your travel writing with a bit of science, or if you enjoy thinking big thoughts in small doses, this might just be the book for you. Monogamy in the animal kingdom (including humans) The varying types of wood grown in response to specific stresses Topics of selected essays - and subsequent conversations over the dinner table or at bedtime - include: Don't let that be a barrier to entry, however, as even the sportsiest of sportsy-outdoors essays allows time for reflection on our relationship with the natural world. Many of the original essays were published in his long-running Natural Acts column in Outside magazine, so at least a third of the essays lean towards sportsy-outdoors rather than sciencey-outdoors. That said, I adored this book, read primarily on the elliptical over the last few weeks. Second, I didn't realize this was a collection of previously published essays - not that that would have prevented me from reading it, of course, but I probably would've started elsewhere. First, I adored Quammen's Monster of God: The Man-Eating Predator in the Jungles of History and the Mind, and on the basis of this adoration added Quammen's entire naturalist oeuvre to my Amazon wishlist. I had certain expectations going into this book that I feel I need to declare up front.

Huh? Not every crisp line represents a triumph of ethical clarity. I will eat stir-fried shrimp, sitr-fried beef, even stir-fried elk, but not stir-fried lion. I will let the butcher do all of my killing, I will destroy habitat but not animals. Moral philosophy, unfortunately, is not one of the mathmatical sciences. We all draw our lines in diferent places, at different angles, and for different reasons, each line's position reflecting a mix of individual factors that include sensibility, emotions, experience, and taste (in both the broad and the narrow senses of that word), as well as sheer righteous logic. There's a fuddling welter of such crisscrossing strictures, each observed by its own faction of conscientious people. I'm a Jainist, I will harm no living thing - except when I breathe or walk down the street, and then only unintentionally. I will squash an earwig in the kitchen but not a beetle in the yard. I will kill if my family is threatened but I won't aggress. I will fight if attacked but I won't kill. I will defend myself against physical menace but only pacifically.

Personal ethics involves the drawing of lines: I will go as far as this boundary, here, but I will not go beyond.

David quammen adelphi