Overview

From the New York Times bestselling author of H is for Hawk and winner of the Samuel Johnson Prize for nonfiction, comes a transcendent collection of essays about the human relationship to the natural world. Animals don't exist in order to teach us things, but that is what they have always done, and most of what they teach us is what we think we know about ourselves. In Vesper Flights, Helen Macdonald brings together a collection of her best loved essays, along with new pieces on topics ranging from nostalgia for a vanishing countryside to the tribulations of farming ostriches to her own private vespers while trying to fall asleep. Meditating on notions of captivity and freedom, immigration and flight, Helen invites us into her most intimate experiences: observing the massive migration of songbirds from the top of the Empire State Building, watching tens of thousands of cranes in Hungary, seeking the last golden orioles in Suffolk's poplar forests. She writes with heart-tugging clarity about wild boar, swifts, mushroom hunting, migraines, the strangeness of birds' nests, and the unexpected guidance and comfort we find when watching wildlife. By one of this century's most important and insightful nature writers, Vesper Flights is a captivating and foundational book about observation, fascination, time, memory, love and loss and how we make sense of the world around us.

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9780802128812

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Reviews

Praise for H is for Hawk Breathtaking . . . Helen Macdonald renders an indelible impression of a raptor's fierce essence--and her own--with words that mimic feathers, so impossibly pretty we don't notice their astonishing engineering. --New York Times Book Review (cover review) Beautiful and nearly feral...H Is for Hawk reminds us that excellent nature writing can lay bare some of the intimacies of the wild world as well. --New York Times Macdonald is a poet, her language rich and taut. --Chicago Tribune Captivating and beautifully written, it's a meditation on the bond between beasts and humans and the pain and beauty of being alive. --People (Book of the Week) One of the loveliest things you'll read this year . . . You'll never see a bird overhead the same way again. A- --Entertainment Weekly Dazzling. --Vogue Coherent, complete, and riveting, perhaps the finest nonfiction I read in the past year. --New Yorker An elegantly written amalgam of nature writing, personal memoir, literary portrait and an examination of bereavement. . . . It illuminates unexpected things in unexpected ways. --Washington Post Glows and burns. --Wall Street Journal Assured, honest and raw . . . a soaring wonder of a book. --Boston Globe

Author Information

HELEN MACDONALD is a writer, poet, illustrator and naturalist, and an affiliated research scholar at the Department of History and Philosophy of Science at the University of Cambridge. She is the author of the bestselling H Is for Hawk, as well as a cultural history of falcons, titled Falcon, and three collections of poetry, including Shaler's Fish. Macdonald was a Research Fellow at Jesus College, Cambridge, has worked as a professional falconer, and has assisted with the management of raptor research and conservation projects across Eurasia. She now writes for the New York Times Magazine.

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