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When Nature Breaks the Law
by Mary Roach
Join "America's funniest science writer" (Peter Carlson, Washington Post), Mary Roach, on an irresistible investigation into the unpredictable world where wildlife and humans meet.
What's to be done about a jaywalking moose? A bear caught breaking and entering? A murderous tree? Three hundred years ago, animals that broke the law would be assigned legal representation and put on trial. These days, as New York Times best-selling author Mary Roach discovers, the answers are best found not in jurisprudence but in science: the curious science of human-wildlife conflict, a discipline at the crossroads of human behavior and wildlife biology.
Roach tags along with animal-attack forensics investigators, human-elephant conflict specialists, bear managers, and "danger tree" faller blasters. Intrepid as ever, she travels from leopard-terrorized hamlets in the Indian Himalaya to St. Peter's Square in the early hours before the pope arrives for Easter Mass, when vandal gulls swoop in to destroy the elaborate floral display. She taste-tests rat bait, learns how to install a vulture effigy, and gets mugged by a macaque.
Combining little-known forensic science and conservation genetics with a motley cast of laser scarecrows, langur impersonators, and trespassing squirrels, Roach reveals as much about humanity as about nature's lawbreakers. When it comes to "problem" wildlife, she finds, humans are more often the problem―and the solution. Fascinating, witty, and humane, Fuzz offers hope for compassionate coexistence in our ever-expanding human habitat.
12 illustrations
"Bestseller Roach sheds light on nature's malefactors in this often funny, always provocative survey of species that 'regularly commit acts that put them at odds with humans'...This eminently entertaining outing is another winner for Roach." - Publishers Weekly (starred review)
"Roach joyfully explores how human culture and wildlife, including plant life, have either found ways to coexist or are constantly at odds...From the terrifying to the frustrating, a great starting point for understanding the animal world." - Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
"A must-read for wildlife enthusiasts, popular science readers, and anyone who has enjoyed Roach's other books. Her occasionally awkward interactions with people and animals make for the engaging narrative style that Roach is famous for." - Library Journal (starred review)
"Hilarious! With Fuzz, Mary Roach again takes us into an unfamiliar scientific realm, in this case the science of managing the conflicts between humans and the natural world―lethal leopards, rampaging elephants, jet-downing birds, even killer trees. It's an ever-widening conflict zone, but one that Ms. Roach gleefully mines for a multitude of bizarre facts that'll make you snort coffee through your nose." - Erik Larson, bestselling author of The Splendid and the Vile
This information about Fuzz was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Photo: John Madere
Mary Roach is the author of six New York Times bestsellers, including Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers; Gulp: Adventures on the Alimentary Canal, and Packing for Mars: The Curious Science of Life in the Void. Her book Fuzz: When Nature Breaks the Law, was released in September 2021. Mary's books have been published in 21 languages, and her second book, Spook, was a New York Times Notable Book. Mary has written for National Geographic, Wired, the New York Times Magazine, and the Journal of Clinical Anatomy, among others. She was a guest editor of the Best American Science and Nature Writing series and an Osher Fellow with the San Francisco Exploratorium and serves as an advisor for Orion and Undark magazines. She has been a finalist for the Royal Society's Winton Prize and a ...
... Full Biography
Author Interview
Link to Mary Roach's Website
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