Friends,

A friend of mine at UCLA will be reading from her new book _Flight Maps_,
a social, cultural, and intellectual history of bird-human relations in
America. I've only read pieces of the dissertation that spawned the book,
and I can tell you it's both provocative and fun. A blurb about the book
and the reading follow -- hope you can make it.

Coll Thrush

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READING - ELLIOT BAY, SATURDAY JUNE 5, 2 PM


FLIGHT MAPS: ADVENTURES WITH NATURE IN MODERN AMERICA

by Jennifer Price


As a nature writer, Price breaks out of the mold in surprising new ways.
With essays that range from the passenger pigeon extinction and the early
Audubon Societies to The Nature Company, TV, and the plastic pink flamingo,
she asks not how Americans have made nature meaningful "Out There," but
rather how we have brought nature into our front yards, our living rooms,
our shopping malls, our restaurants. By turns witty, whimsical, and urgent,
Flight Maps is a meditation, at once sophisticated and funny, on modern
Americans' desire to make nature meaningful in their lives.


"A highly stimulating exploration of the bewildering ingenuity with which
America converts its ideals about nature into status symbols and commercial
products. Rush out and buy it!"
------David Rains Wallace


"Funny, compassionate, and wonderfully written, Flight Maps soars far above
the nature writing so evident these days."
------Richard White


"It should be required reading for anyone who cares about the complex and
contradictory ways our lives connect with the natural world."
------William Cronon