Today, forty-six million Americans are bird-watchers. The Life of the Skies is a genre-bending journey into the meaning of a pursuit born out of the tangled history of industrialization and nature longing. Jonathan Rosen set out on a quest not merely to see birds but to fathom their centrality--historical and literary, spiritual and scientific--to a culture torn between the desire both to conquer and to conserve. The Life of the Skies is at once a history of bird-watching in America, a meditation on changes in our views about killing animals, and a deeply personal book about the transforming qualities of a life spent observing the natural world.
- ISBN10 0312428197
- ISBN13 9780312428198
- Publish Date 23 December 2008 (first published 19 February 2008)
- Publish Status Active
- Imprint Picador USA
- Format Paperback (US Trade)
- Pages 324
- Language English