About this item
Behold the cormorant: silent, still, cruciform, and brooding; flashing, soaring, quick as a snake. Evolution has crafted the only creature on Earth that can migrate the length of a continent, dive and hunt deep underwater, perch comfortably on a branch or a wire, walk on land, climb up cliff faces, feed on thousands of different species, and live beside both fresh and salt water in a vast global range of temperatures and altitudes, often in close proximity to man. Long a symbol of gluttony, greed, bad luck, and evil, the cormorant has led a troubled existence in human history, myth, and literature. The birds have been prized as a source of mineral wealth in Peru, hunted to extinction in the Arctic, trained by the Japanese to catch fish, demonized by Milton in Paradise Lost, and reviled, despised, and exterminated by sport and commercial fishermen from Israel to Indianapolis, Toronto to Tierra del Fuego.
About the Author
Richard J. King is the author of "Lobster," acclaimed by the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal, and "The Devil's Cormorant: A Natural History," selected as a top-five science book of the year by Library Journal and short-listed for the ASLE Creative Book Award. He also is the author and illustrator of the memoir "Meeting Tom Brady." Most recently he is the author of "Ahab's Rolling Sea: A Natural History of Moby-Dick," released this fall 2019. King is series editor for Seafaring America with UP New England, edits the "Searchable Sea Literature" website, and has published widely on maritime topics in scholarly and popular magazines. He writes and illustrates a regular column on animals for the kids' section of Sea History magazine and is a visiting professor at the Sea Education Association in Woods Hole, MA. For more, please see "www.richardjking.info"
