an inordinate fondness for beetles an attribute of deity? mosquito as guardian of tropical forests, crows too intelligent

If you'd rather have your "news of the weird" buried under a pile of forced and mixed metaphors, this is your guy. Just awful writing, the painful attempts to include literary references make it worse still. ( )

This collection is hard to find, but it's a great one. Quammen's essays are phenomenal. He's the working man's biology writer. You don't have to have a degree to know what he's talking about, and I think that's because he took an English degree rather than biology. So he's just a great writer whose love of nature shines through in his essays. ( )