Promotions - Choice's Outstanding Academic Titles 2025 -

Feather Trails is a splendid, detailed account of Osborn's years of fieldwork with three endangered birds. The challenges of this work, its failures and victories, are told in a very personal yet scientifically rigorous narrative. Osborn is an award-winning environmental writer widely published in magazines, and her earlier book, Condors in Canyon Country (2007), was well-received. In this volume, she describes in lyric detail the Hawaiian rainforest (for the Hawaiian crow), the Grand Canyon area (California condor), and the Rocky Mountains (peregrine falcon). It's too bad this fine book is unillustrated; a few photographs of the three species and their haunts would add much flavor to this important work. Adding much to the volume's considerable gravitas are hundreds of well-researched and interesting chapter notes, plus an impressive acknowledgments section that profiles other endangered species biologists and a complete, thorough index. It reads well. It is a worthy addition to the burgeoning literature on extinction and endangerment.Summing Up: Highly recommended. General readers through faculty.

This important monograph records the first release of European starlings in America, in Central Park in 1889, and their consequent rapid spread to all the lower 48 states and most of Canada. In those days, releasing non-native songbirds was popular. There were soon massive roosts, sometimes millions, of these messy, noisy birds in many cities and mostly unsuccessful attempts to disrupt them using firearms, noise, chemicals, etc. Starlings also cause considerable crop damage and aircraft collisions. In the 1970s, aircraft sprayed countless starling roosts, especially in Kentucky and Tennessee. Stark (journalist) does an excellent job documenting this account with 369 chapter notes, engaging prose, and 18 text figures. He describes starlings' skills as mimics and their enormous pre-roost, shifting, cloud-like formations, called murmurations--one of the great spectacles of nature. Stark documents the damage starlings inflict on native birds, especially bluebirds, competing with them and other cavity-nesting species. A document of many virtues, this volume could have been improved with an index and a general reference list.Summing Up: Highly recommended. All readership levels.

This natural history book describes the life history and, occasionally, management of a wide range of fish species in an array of marine habitats. Many books cover these topics, but few do so as well as this volume. Meisel (Ceiba Foundation) writes clearly and fluidly in a style that informs, amuses, and entices readers, even if their interest in marine fish is marginal. No special or technical knowledge is required to understand the content. Readers will learn much about the ecology of many marine habitats. Accounts of the species and habitats remain faithful to the underlying science. Although Meisel inclines toward conservation, his description of human impacts balances both the successes and failures of our interactions with marine fish. The professional audience will find this book useful because of how well the notes section introduces the relevant scientific literature for the majority of the topics. There are a few well-rendered line illustrations, but this book relies on its narrative to tell its story.Summing Up: Highly recommended. All readership levels.