"In this uplifting memoir, a professor and activist shares what birds can teach us about life, social change, and protecting the environment"-- In this affecting memoir, O'Kane (Guatemala in Focus), a natural sciences lecturer at the University of Vermont, elegantly weaves personal and natural history as she details how her fascination with birds compelled her to quit her journalism career, return to school at age 45 to get a PhD in environmental...

After her four kids were nearly grown and she was about to turn 50, Phoebe Snetsinger was told she had less than a year to live. Snetsinger, a St. Louis housewife and avid backyard birder, decided to spend that year traveling the world in search of birds. As it turned out, her doctors were wrong, but Phoebe's passion had been ignited and she spent the next eighteen years crisscrossing the globe recklessly staking out her quarry. En route she contracted...

"At a personal and professional crossroads, a man resets his life and finds sobriety, love, and 618 bird species, cycling his way to a very Big Year. In Birding Under the Influence, Dorian Anderson, a neuroscience researcher on a pressure-filled life trajectory, walks away from the world of elite institutions, research labs, and academic publishing. In doing so, he falls in love and discovers he has freed himself to embrace his lifelong passion for...