Synopses & Reviews
A frustrated housewife sets out to see more bird species than anyone in history--and ends up risking her life again and again in the wildest places on earth.
Phoebe Snetsinger had planned to be a scientist, but, like most women who got married in the 1950s, she ended up keeping house, with four kids and a home in the suburbs by her mid-thirties. Numb and isolated, she turned to bird-watching, but she soon tired of the birds near home and yearned to travel the world. Then her life took a crushing turn: At forty-nine, she was diagnosed with cancer and told that she had less than a year to live. Devastated, she began crisscrossing the globe, finding rare and spectacular birds that brought her to the heights of spiritual ecstasy. But as it turned out, she beat the cancer. She eventually went to more than a hundred countries, had frequent brushes with danger, became a hero in the birding world, and set a record for the most species seen. Life List is a powerful portrait of a woman who found refuge from society's expectations in a dangerous and soul-stirring obsession.
Review
“A phenomenal tale—beautifully told—of escape, risk, and obsession. Judicious [and] insightful.”—Patricia OToole, author of When Trumpets Call: Theodore Roosevelt After the White House
"Except for one thing, this book would rate as a great adventure novel and fictional psychological portrait, about a woman's obsession with bird-watching, its effect on her relationships with her husband and her four children, and the horrifying mishaps that she survived on each continent--until the last mishap. But the book isn't that great novel, because instead it's a great true story: the biography of Phoebe Snetsinger, who set the world record for bird species seen, after growing up in an era when American women weren't supposed to be competitive or have careers. Whether or not you pretend that it's a novel, you'll enjoy this powerful, moving story."—Jared Diamond, Pulitzer-Prize-winning author of Guns, Germs, and Steel and Collapse
"An intriguing portrait of one of the best-known birders of the modern age. I couldn't put it down!"—Peter Kaestner, Americas top (living) bird lister
“Life List is an engaging saga of how a brave and complex woman defied cancer and gender in an epic quest to become the first person to see 8,000 bird species."—Frank Gill, author Ornithology
“I am not a woman. I am not a birdwatcher, and don't plan to become one. But I nevertheless found Life List to be a charming, heartening, fascinating, and altogether inspiring guide to living life (and facing death) with one's full attention.”—Kurt Andersen, author of Heyday
“Life List will easily attract bird-people and the rest of us with its distinctive call. Olivia Gentile has written a graceful and very appealing book.”—Meg Wolitzer, author of The Ten-Year Nap and Sleepwalking
"Gentile's tale of a desperate but determined housewife with a passion for birds and adventure is engrossing, sharp, and affecting--a touching portrait and great read."—Susan Orlean, author The Bullfighter Checks Her Makeup and The Orchid Thief
“Life List is an uncommon sort of book--a sincere, sometimes sombre flight through the remarkable, storied life of one of birding's most tenacious and most erudite adherents. Olivia Gentile approaches her subject with equal parts sympathy and sobriety, capturing both the exhilaration and the costs of pursuing one's passion to the fullest.”—Edward S. Brinkley, editor of North American Birds Journal
"Olivia Gentiles Life List is the remarkable story of Phoebe Snetsinger, a woman trapped by her life as homemaker, who found liberation in bird watching. Diagnosed with terminal cancer, she began traveling the world, not seeking a cure, but in search of rare birds—becoming a kind of ornithologist's heroine, and living another eighteen years. Gentiles journalistic temperament lures you in, whether you like birds or not (frankly I kind of hate them). The result is a beautifully revealing, sensitive exploration of Snetsingers singular obsession. The story slips under your skin—you cant help but keep reading.”—A.M. Homes
“Phoebe Snetsinger lived a life of high adventure and exotic travel familiar to 19th century explorers - except that she was a 1960s Midwestern housewife who was supposed to be dying of cancer. How she became the world's most driven, globe-trotting birder, what she gained and what she sacrificed to see three-quarters of the Earth's birds, makes Life List an unusually compelling story.”—Scott Weidensaul, author of Of a Feather
Synopsis
“This is not…the story of a little old lady in tennis shoes who saw a lot of birds…[A] well-told story that carries you along as if on wings.”Hartford Courant At age forty-nine, Phoebe Snetsinger, frustrated homemaker, mother of four, and amateur birdwatcher, was told she was dying of cancer. She decided to spend the little time she had left seeing as many birds as possible around the world. But against all odds, her cancer went into remission, and she ended up taking hundreds of bold, adventurous trips to all seven continents and seeing more species than anyone in historyat great cost to her family and her safety. Life List is the story of a woman who found refuge from societys expectations in a dangerous and soul-stirring obsession.
Synopsis
After her four kids were nearly grown and she was about to turn 50, Phoebe Snetsinger was told she had less than a year to live. Snetsinger, a St. Louis housewife and avid backyard birder, decided to spend that year traveling the world in search of birds. As it turned out, her doctors were wrong, but Phoebe's passion had been ignited and she spent the next eighteen years crisscrossing the globe recklessly staking out her quarry. En route she contracted malaria in Zambia, nearly fell to her death in Zaire, and was kidnapped and gang raped on the outskirts of Port Moresby. Yet none of this curbed her enthusiasm. By the time she died in a bus accident while birding in Madagascar in 1999, Phoebe was world renowned and had seen more species8,500 of the roughly 10,000than anyone in history.
A fascinating portrait of a hobbiest whose obsession contributed to both her success and her demise, Life List brings Phoebe Snetsinger and the wild world of amatuer ornithology to vivid life.
About the Author
Olivia Gentile earned a BA from Harvard College and an MFA from Columbia University. She has worked as a newspaper reporter for which she won the Vermont Press Association's Rookie Reporter of the Year Award and the Connecticut Society of Professional Journalist's Magazine Writing Award.