About this item
In the vein of H Is for Hawk and the work of Rebecca Solnit and Elizabeth Kolbert - a masterful consideration of the profound, urgent necessity to bear witness to life and loss Here is a wide-ranging adventure in becoming a citizen scientist by an award-winning writer and environmental thought leader. As Mary Ellen Hannibal wades into tide pools, follows hawks, and scours mountains to collect data on threatened species, she discovers the power of a heroic cast of volunteers - and the makings of what may be our last, best hope in slowing an unprecedented mass extinction. Digging deeply, Hannibal traces today's tech-enabled citizen science movement to its roots: the centuries-long tradition of amateur observation by writers and naturalists. Prompted by her novelist father's sudden death, she also examines her own past - and discovers a family legacy of looking closely at the world. With unbending zeal for protecting the planet, she then turns her gaze to the wealth of species left to fight for. Combining original reporting, meticulous research, and memoir in impassioned prose, Citizen Scientist is a literary event, a blueprint for action, and the story of how one woman rescued herself from an odyssey of loss - with a new kind of science.
About the Author
I am a Bay Area writer and editor focusing on natural history. My new book is Citizen Scientist: Searching for Heroes and Hope in an Age of Extinction. It is all about how we are losing species right under our noses, something E.O. Wilson says is more dangerous to human well-being than climate change. I participate in projects and explain some history -- Darwin, Jefferson, Steinbeck, and Joseph Campbell were all citizen scientists. I also connect with regular people who are saving nature. My father died while I was writing the book, which changed how I was writing it. As Campbell said, myth is nature speaking, and the goal of human life is to align with nature -- dying, my father taught me about both.
My previous book is The Spine of the Continent. To research it, I travelled the Rockies from Waterton Lakes, Canada, down to Sonora, Mexico. Nobody knows precisely when the term "spine of the continent" came into use to describe this vast landscape, but the Miistakis Indians called the Rockies "the backbone of the world." So much of what science tells us today about nature is echoed in native wisdom.
My previous books are Evidence of Evolution, Good Parenting Through Your Divorce, and Leaves & Pods. I have received a bunch of fellowships and awards, including the National Association of Science Writers award.
