Belonging on an Island: Birds, Extinction, and Evolution in Hawai'i (Hardcover) (ISBN-13: 9780300229646)

A lively, rich natural history of Hawaiian birds that challenges existing ideas about what constitutes biocultural nativeness and belonging

This natural history takes readers on a thousand-year journey as it explores the Hawaiian Islands' beautiful birds and a variety of topics including extinction, evolution, survival, conservationists and their work, and, most significantly, the concept of belonging. Author Daniel Lewis, an award-winning historian and globe-traveling amateur birder, builds this lively text around the stories of four species--the Stumbling Moa-Nalo, the Kaua'I 'O'o, the Palila, and the Japanese White-Eye.

Lewis offers innovative ways to think about what it means to be native and proposes new definitions that apply to people as well as to birds. Being native, he argues, is a relative state influenced by factors including the passage of time, charisma, scarcity, utility to others, short-term evolutionary processes, and changing relationships with other organisms. This book also describes how bird conservation started in Hawai'i, and the naturalists and environmentalists who did extraordinary work.

Author: Daniel Lewis
ISBN-10: 030022964X
ISBN-13: 9780300229646
Publisher: Yale University Press
Language: English
Published: 04/10/2018
Pages: 320
Format: Hardcover
Weight: 1.40lbs
Size: 9.40h x 6.10w x 1.30d

Review Citation(s):
Choice 11/01/2018