Newspapers / North Carolina Wesleyan University … / April 15, 1996, edition 1 / Page 2
Part of North Carolina Wesleyan University Student Newspaper / About this page
This page has errors
The date, title, or page description is wrong
This page has harmful content
This page contains sensitive or offensive material
PAGE 2 — THE DECREE — APRIL 15,1996 Award-winning science writer to speak at Wesleyan April 20 m Award-winning science writer David Quammen will appear at N.C. Wesleyan College on April 20 as part of the Visiting Writer Series. Quammen recently published The Song of the Dodo: Island Bio geography in an Age of Extinc tion, an enlightening and enter taining tour of islands around the world as well as the subject of island biogeography. Based on eight years of re search around the world. The Song of the Dodos is a blend of science, adventure, travel, history, and even detective work. “Not only is this book com pulsively readable — a master piece, maybe the masterpiece of science journalism, it also mat ters deeply,” writes Bill McKibben in Audubon Magazine. “It tells how we came to under stand the biological dynamic of the planet just in time to watch it start to collapse.” As Quammen explains, island biogeography is the science con cerned with where animals and plants are, and where they are not. It is, he happily reports, “full of cheap thrills. Many of the world’s gaudiest life forms, both plant and animal, occur on islands. There are giants, dwarfs, crossover art ists, nonconformists of every sort.” Beginning with one of the pio neers of island biogeography, Alfred Russel Wallace, in the mid-1800’s, Quammen presents the historical background of the field, a story with elements of bravery, genius, and the occa sional mishaps. Drawing on travels which took him to such places as Madagas car, New Guinea, Krakatau, Mauritius, the Galapagos, Guam, Tasmania, the Central Amazon, and Komodo, Quammen captures the subject in all its color and variety. He recounts his own memo rable encounters with Komodo dragons who pile onto a goat car cass “like NFL linemen attacking a fumble;” giant tortoises, “jumbled against one another like a bad freeway accident among Volkswagens;” and dueling igua nas — “This nonsense can go on for as much as five hours, but who are we to judge? It’s no cra zier than a Tennessee roadhouse on a Saturday night.” He calls the voice of the indri, the largest of all surviving lemurs, as “a cross between the call of a humpback whale and a saxophone riff by Charlie Parker.” He also introduces an equally eccentric menagerie of human scientists met along the way. A book filled with landscape, wonder and ideas. The Song of the Dodo is a ringing wake-up call to our age of extinctions. Above all, Quammen injects an immediacy into abstract issues about extinction and the future of Earth’s species. Whether writing of the last dodo or the near-extermination of the Tasmanian aborigines, Quammen speaks movingly of individual losses. “The song of the dodo has been silent for three centuries, but the song of the indri still rings in the forests of Madagascar,” he says. “My purpose in writing this book was to allow you to hear it, and to entice you to care.” David Quammen is a two-time recipient of the National Maga zine Award for his science essays HAVE FUN WHILE YOU EARN COLLEGE CREDIT SCUBA classes for college students Reduced tuition Convenient schedule For Details, Call Pro Scuba Center 985-3951 and other work in Outside maga zine. He wrote a natural science column in Outside from 1981- 1995. His work has also appeared in Harper’s, Esquire, Rolling Stone, Audubon, and other maga zines. His previous books include two collections of essays. Natu ral Acts, which received the Pa cific Northwest Booksellers Award, and The Fight of the Iguana, as well as an historical espionage novel. The Soul of Viktor Tronko. Quammen was bom in 1948 and has earned degrees from Yale and Oxford. He is the recipient of a Rhodes Scholarship and a Guggenheim Fellowship. He lives in Montana with his wife Kris Ellingsen, an artist and musician. The time and place of Quammen’s Wesleyan lecture was not available at press time. SCIENCE JOURNALIST DAVID QUAMMEN TRUTH PART II Truth and Relativism Monday, April 15 3:30 p.m., Chapel David Jones '‘Truth, Relativism, and the American Way' Fred Grissom “On Having, and Not Having, the Truth” Ken Finney “The Truth, for Christ's Sake” Monday, April 22 7:30 p.m., Chapel Mary Lou Steed “The Culture Wars” Monday, April 29 3:30 p.m.. Chapel Concluding Panel A ^
North Carolina Wesleyan University Student Newspaper
Standardized title groups preceding, succeeding, and alternate titles together.
April 15, 1996, edition 1
2
Click "Submit" to request a review of this page. NCDHC staff will check .
0 / 75