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by Jack E. Davis (Author)
The bald eagle is regal but fearless, a bird you're not inclined to argue with. For centuries, Americans have celebrated it as "majestic" and "noble," yet savaged the living bird behind their national symbol as a malicious predator of livestock and, falsely, a snatcher of babies. Taking us from before the nation's founding through inconceivable resurgences of this enduring all-American species, Jack E. Davis contrasts the age when native peoples lived beside it peacefully with that when others, whether through hunting bounties or DDT pesticides, twice pushed Haliaeetus leucocephalus to the brink of extinction.
Filled with spectacular stories of Founding Fathers, rapacious hunters, heroic bird rescuers, and the lives of bald eagles themselves--monogamous creatures, considered among the animal world's finest parents--The Bald Eagle is a much-awaited cultural and natural history that demonstrates how this bird's wondrous journey may provide inspiration today, as we grapple with environmental peril on a larger scale.
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"Jack Davis shows us not only what bald eagles have meant to humans . . . but what it might feel like to be one."
--Jonathan Meiburg, author of A Most Remarkable Creature
"In The Bald Eagle, Jack E. Davis pays magnificent tribute to the national symbol, weaving a richly layered story that spans the centuries and bridges patriotism, Native spirituality, environment carnage and, against all odds, ecological redemption that brought the eagle back to America's skies."
--Scott Weidensaul, author of A World on the Wing
"In this stunning and insightful history, Jack Davis tells the captivating story of the often-misunderstood emperor of the sky, of its place in the natural order, of its brush with extinction, and of the welcome return of its shadow passing over us from on high."
--Bill Souder, author of Under a Wild Sky
"The story of the bald eagle and its human champions is more complicated--and more interesting--than most of us know, full of myth, mischief, and repeated close calls. The Bald Eagle by Jack Davis does justice to a grand bird and its epic tale."
--Michelle Nijhuis, author of Beloved Beasts
"Jack Davis has written a book that's both rollicking and introspective. . . Full of fascinating natural history and human characters from the drafters of the constitution to Audubon birders, The Bald Eagle brings us from desert to tundra on a journey illuminating how the American way of doing business almost killed the bald eagle--twice. But in this thrilling, compulsively readable, deeply researched environmental history we also see how sensibilities matter and can change in time to save the national symbol and, perhaps, ourselves."
--Bathsheba Demuth, author of Floating Coast
