Staff Pick
Mooallem wrote this book for his young daughter, making the often overwhelming topics of extinction and climate change feel much more approachable. He spans decades (sometimes centuries) with his extensive research and fieldwork and, while you certainly have learned something by the end, you feel much more as though you've gone on this "sometimes dismaying, weirdly reassuring" journey with Jon and his daughter. It'll leave you asking questions, but in all the best ways. (Plus, check out the podcast 99% Invisible, episode 91, for a live recording featuring music by some of the Decemberists.) Recommended By Alec B., Powells.com
Synopses & Reviews
"Ambitious and fascinating... [Mooallem] seamlessly blends reportage from the front lines of wildlife conservation with a lively cultural history of animals in America." --New York Times Book Review
Journalist Jon Mooallem has watched his little daughters world overflow with animals butterfly pajamas, appliquéd owlswhile the actual world shes inheriting slides into a great storm of extinction. Half of all species could disappear by the end of the century, and scientists now concede that most of Americas endangered animals will survive only if conservationists keep rigging the world around them in their favor. So Mooallem ventures into the field, often taking his daughter with him, to move beyond childlike fascination and make those creatures feel more real. Wild Ones is a tour through our environmental moment and the eccentric cultural history of people and wild animals in America that inflects itfrom Thomas Jeffersons celebrations of early abundance to the turn-of the-last-century origins of the teddy bear to the whale-loving hippies of the 1970s. In America, Wild Ones discovers, wildlife has always inhabited the terrain of our imagination as much as the actual land.
The journey is framed by the stories of three modern-day endangered species: the polar bear, victimized by climate change and ogled by tourists outside a remote northern town; the little-known Langes metalmark butterfly, foundering on a shred of industrialized land near San Francisco; and the whooping crane as its led on a months-long migration by costumed men in ultralight airplanes. The wilderness that Wild Ones navigates is a scrappy, disorderly place where amateur conservationists do grueling, sometimes preposterous-looking work; where a marketer maneuvers to control the polar bears image while Martha Stewart turns up to film those beasts for her show on the Hallmark Channel. Our most comforting ideas about nature unravel. In their place, Mooallem forges a new and affirming vision of the human animal and the wild ones as kindred creatures on an imperfect planet.
With propulsive curiosity and searing wit, and without the easy moralizing and nature worship of environmental journalisms older guard, Wild Ones merges reportage, science, and history into a humane and endearing meditation on what it means to live in, and bring a life into, a broken world.
--And dont miss the album based on the book: WILD ONES by Black Prairie. Digital release on May 14; physical release on June 11--
Review
"Ambitious and fascinating... [Mooallem] seamlessly blends reportage from the front lines of wildlife conservation with a lively cultural history of animals in America…This is not a book about wilderness; its a book about us." --
New York Times Book Review “Intelligent and highly nuanced… This book may bring tears to your eyes. If so, they will be drawn out by the tragedy of what we have done and the all-too-often pathetic efforts to turn back the clock. But read through the tears, and you will find yourself more informed, more prepared to make a difference. Mooallem has done those of us who care deeply about nature and wildlife a favor, leaving us justifiably off balance but putting us in a better position to move beyond hubris to pragmatic solutions.” --San Francisco Chronicle
“An engaging nature/environment book that goes beyond simple-minded sloganeering.” - Kirkus
“Wild Ones heightens ones awareness of the precipitous position of so many of our animal species, but its also filled with curiosity and hope. The men and women that Mooallem tails are dreamers, but you wind up rooting for them to keep on dreaming.” - Smithsonian
“There is, in short, ridiculously lots to love about Jon Mooallems Wild Ones—starting with its thoughtful and troubling observation that our increasingly extravagant effort at species conservation is a corollary to, as much as a solution for, our habit of rendering wild animals extinct.” - New York Magazine
“Mooallem argues conservation is and always has been about fulfilling peoples need for nostalgic wildness, however contrived and fictitious it may be. Every generation strives to return the Earth to some idealized former state. Although his journey is sobering, Mooallems conclusion is upbeat: Even small conservation victories matter.” - Discover
“This book is dense with both thought and fact… It is written with a vernacularly light touch, shot through with compassion and wit, not to mention open amazement, the only apt response to the story of our monumental hubris.” - The Daily Beast
“Mooallem argues that by focusing on the animals themselves, we are overlooking the point of the Endangered Species Act, which stressed the paramount importance of ecosystems—a far more difficult thing to save than a species. He strives for the big picture here and gently guides readers through what ultimately becomes a poignant tribute to all who try to make the world a better place. This is a wise approach to a troubling subject, and Mooallems words do give us something to hold on to as we continue to struggle with what it means to save the planet.” - Booklist
"It is impossible to express, within the tiny game-park confines of a back cover, how amazing I find this book. I love it line by perfect, carefully crafted line, and I love it for the freshness and intelligent humanity of its ideas. As literary nonfiction, as essay, as reportage, Wild Ones is, to my mind, about as good as writing gets."
—Mary Roach, author of Stiff and Gulp
"I love Jon Mooallem and I love animals, but this book is even better than the sum of its parts. Mooallem makes a persuasive case that wild animals are America's cultural heritage—our Sistine Chapel and our Great Books—and the story he tells is an archetypal American one. Even as the animals are being destroyed by unthinking, unconscious corporate forces, they are also being rescued through the tremendous energy and ingenuity of individuals, men and women who wear whooping-crane costumes, cohabitate with dolphins, and encourage condors to ejaculate on their heads. Wild Ones made me proud to be American."
—Elif Batuman, author of The Possessed
"Part harrowing arctic adventure, part crazy airborne travelogue, and often funny family trek, Wild Ones shows us that while saving species might be of debatable value to some, it is maybe in our genes, and definitely in our hearts. Mooallem's analysis of our various environmental movements has the breadth and penetrating clarity of Michael Pollan, but more importantly he makes us wonder even more about a world that is in desperate need of more wonder."
—Robert Sullivan, author of Rats and My American Revolution
"During the course of his three expeditions, Jon Mooallem collects in the specimen jars of his elegant paragraphs enough ironies, curiosities, insights, and revelations—enough life, wild and otherwise—to stock a mind-altering museum, one unlike any other, in which Martha Stewart has wandered into the polar bear exhibit, and the Hall of North American Animals turns out also to be a hall of mirrors. With Mooallem as your nature guide, you won't look at wild animals—or at Homo americanus—quite the same way again."
—Donovan Hohn, author of Moby-Duck
Synopsis
Journalist Jon Mooallem has watched his little daughter s world overflow with animals butterfly pajamas, appliqued owls while the actual world she s inheriting slides into a great storm of extinction. Half of all species could disappear by the end of the century, and scientists now concede that most of America s endangered animals will survive only if conservationists keep rigging the world around them in their favor. So Mooallem ventures into the field, often taking his daughter with him, to move beyond childlike fascination and make those creatures feel more real. Wild Ones is a tour through our environmental moment and the eccentric cultural history of people and wild animals in America that inflects it from Thomas Jefferson s celebrations of early abundance to the turn-of the-last-century origins of the teddy bear to the whale-loving hippies of the 1970s. With propulsive curiosity and searing wit, and without the easy moralizing and nature worship of environmental journalism s older guard, Wild Ones merges reportage, science, and history into a humane and endearing meditation on what it means to live in, and bring a life into, a broken world."
Synopsis
"Intelligent and highly nuanced... This book may bring tears to your eyes." -- San Francisco Chronicle Journalist Jon Mooallem has watched his little daughter's world overflow with animals butterfly pajamas, appliqu d owls--while the actual world she's inheriting slides into a great storm of extinction. Half of all species could disappear by the end of the century, and scientists now concede that most of America's endangered animals will survive only if conservationists keep rigging the world around them in their favor. So Mooallem ventures into the field, often taking his daughter with him, to move beyond childlike fascination and make those creatures feel more real. Wild Ones is a tour through our environmental moment and the eccentric cultural history of people and wild animals in America that inflects it--from Thomas Jefferson's celebrations of early abundance to the turn-of the-last-century origins of the teddy bear to the whale-loving hippies of the 1970s. With propulsive curiosity and searing wit, and without the easy moralizing and nature worship of environmental journalism's older guard, Wild Ones merges reportage, science, and history into a humane and endearing meditation on what it means to live in, and bring a life into, a broken world.
About the Author
Jon Mooallem is a contributing writer for the New York Times Magazine and Pop-Up Magazine, a live magazine performed on stage in San Francisco. He has contributed to This American Life, Radiolab, the New Yorker, Harper's, Wired, and many other radio shows and publications. He lives in San Francisco.