NONFICTION
Birdology
by Sy Montgomery, $25
I thought I knew what I was getting into with Sy Montgomery’s “Birdology.” Like a birder spotting a common species, a mockingbird, say, I recognized the markings of just this sort of bird book: the personal anecdotes, the threading of relevant science, the side helping of awe.
A quick skim confirmed my initial sighting: gushing sentences about birds “wondrous and mysterious” that cause the author to chirp, “My heart sings.” I had seen it all before.
But then came the chickens: a flock of hens that roam the author’s yard, befriend her neighbors and, as chicks, roost in her hair and peck in her lap. Their lives are intimately entwined with Montgomery’s, and it shows as she brings to life the surprisingly individual worlds of a type of bird that most of us think of (if at all) as McNuggets.
“Chickens both remember the past and anticipate the future,” she asserts and then proves it through anecdotes and a sampling of relevant scientific studies. Sure, much of the way chickens act — like pecking to death a wounded hatchery-mate — is instinctive, but Montgomery deftly questions our easy ridicule of instinct, as if it isn’t what drives much of our own behavior.
The author’s heart might sometimes sing a little too much for my taste, and the prose is more often informative than transformative, but the book caught me by surprise, giving me a peek into feathered worlds.
Like many recent books, “Birdology” strives to correct the dated but still-recent scientific assessment of animals — birds in particular — as unfeeling automatons.
Luckily, science has almost caught up to what every pet owner knows, and Montgomery avails herself of new findings as she brings to life parrots that converse rather than merely “parrot,” crows that use tools and pigeons that navigate by making use of everything from Earth’s magnetism to smell.
Because each chapter tackles a different bird, an unevenness prevails, and the homey birds prove most fascinating. For instance, after visiting the backyard chickens we head straight to the rain forest of New Guinea to search for the giant cassowary, a dinosaurlike bird that stands 6 feet tall and can leap in the air, kick and slice humans open with their “razor-sharp killing claw.”
Montgomery cautions against focusing on the more sensationalistic and violent aspects of the bird, but at the same time she indulges in those details, perhaps trying a little too hard to keep our attention.
The result is that the cassowary, for all its grandeur, never flies quite as high as her beloved chickens.
NONFICTION
Opium: Uncovering the Politics of the Poppy
by Pierre-Arnaud Chouvy, $27.95
In 1971, President Richard Nixon declared that drugs were “public enemy No. 1” and launched an aggressive new policy known as the War on Drugs. Now, billions of dollars and decades later, Pierre-Arnaud Chouvy argues that these efforts are not working. This will not be news to most people. But why aren’t our efforts more effective? And what could we be doing differently? These are the questions he tackles in “Opium.”
Chouvy outlines the history of opium trafficking, beginning in ancient times when it was likely traded on the Silk Road. After eras in which Turkey, China and Southeast Asia played dominant roles in the market, recent data indicate that 93 percent of the world’s poppy supply is grown in Afghanistan.
While packed with meticulous details, the book is a bit hard to follow because of a deluge of unfamiliar names, political factions and geographic locations that are included with little explanation or context.
Chouvy achieves more clarity in his analysis of why the illicit opium trade continues to thrive, explaining the strong correlation between war economies and drug economies. “War has turned opium production into a source of funds for military commanders and warlords faced with financial shortages,” he writes, “and into a coping mechanism for farmers confronted with a new war-driven market and with war-induced physical and economic disruption.”
He also explains how the United States has sometimes hampered its own efforts to suppress the drug trade, claiming that the CIA has cooperated with international drug lords to gain influence and intelligence.
In laying out the economics and politics that tend to accompany opium farming, Chouvy encourages us to re-evaluate our drug policy to focus less on the trade itself and more on its root causes, arguing that not until Afghanistan enjoys economic growth and a stable government will it be possible to curtail the drug trade.
