RaveThe Atlantic... lively ... I was reminded, reading Duncan’s paean to them, just how whimsical indexes can be ... In giving the index its biography, Duncan rightly celebrates the paratexts—the peripheral ephemera—that transmogrify an author’s work from a Microsoft Word doc into a pleasing object on the shelf of your local bookshop ... If those topics don’t get your heart racing, perhaps this isn’t the book for you—but that would be a shame. Duncan’s enthusiasms are contagious, such as his effusion over the \'characterful\' gothic capital J—actually meant to stand for 1—the first printed page number, in the margins of a 15th-century printed sermon: \'I love this J all the more for its blurriness. I would rather it were this way.\'
Carl Safina
PositiveThe New York Times Book Review... living among the animals, in their world, Safina and the field scientists he visits show us something else, something too often overlooked in research and in conservation: who the animals are, and how they live...More compelling than facts about species are tales of individuals — characters, with personality — living among peers or kin. So it’s the stories of Safina’s days with these animals that move us ... The ideal way to observe animals is to see them through the words of others, frankly — which is what Safina lets us do.
