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(More customer reviews)Bernd Heinrich is a very good writer. I have enjoyed his work ever since I turned up "In a Patch of Fireweed" quite a few years ago. However, I think his current book "The Snoring Bird: My Family's Journey Through a Century of Biology" is his best book yet. This takes the reader into the heart and soul of Bernd's often eccentric, but never dull, family, especially his father Gerd. Gerd comes across (like most complicated personalities) as often difficult to understand. He is meticulous in all his endeavors, especially in his love of the wasps in the family Ichneumonidae (concentrated in the subfamily Ichneumoninae). At the same time he cannot escape the realities imposed on him by two World Wars and his association with the German Army as a cavalry soldier, pilot and Luftwaffe officer. A generally decent person (except sometimes in his relationship with women, including his daughters), he nevertheless obeys orders to shoot partisans during World War I. He justified the action as duty, but Bernd did not understand it. The story of Gerd's continued interests in natural science despite more adversity than most people experience except in modern third world countries, his adventures in tropical lands and his sheer survival is gripping.The family's escape from Borowke in Poland to the Hahnheide Forest in northern Germany is amazing. But, as Bernd notes, they were the lucky ones! I was so captured by the narrative that I simply could not stop reading!
It has been pointed out to me that some of the historic events in this book are mis-reported. I have no doubt that this is true, especially since anything autobiographical even in part is colored by the author's impressions (Gerald Durrell's delightful books on his life on the island of Corfu are a case in point, as many details have been moved around, improved and altered to promote a certain story line.) In some few cases such works may contain false information designed to deceive. I have no reason to believe that Heinrich has done this, but I am no expert in the history of the period. I can thus only give the potential reader my impression, and that impression is very favorable in so far as the biology, style and development of the story line goes. I will leave the reader to decide the accuracy of the history reported by Heinrich. The main criticism one could make is that he may not warn the reader, as Durrell does to some extent, of possible historical inaccuracy.
While Bernd never became the systematist his father was (much to Gerd's sorrow), he did become a world-renowned biologist, noted for studies on physiology and behavior. He also became a wonderful writer, with the ability to instill the wonder around him into his readers.
Natural scientists are both blessed and cursed. They are blessed (as I have often been) by the ability to find something of interest in any habitat, be it tropical forest or abandoned city lot. We are never bored! The curse is that few people who are not bitten by the same bug ever understand the fascination we feel with such things as tiny wasps, spiders, vascular plants or one-celled organisms (to name a few). Perhaps the readers of this book, which I hope are many, can glimpse a bit of the reason for our seeming madness.
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Although Gerd Heinrich, a devoted naturalist, specialized in wasps, Bernd Heinrich tried to distance himself from his "old-fashioned" father, becoming a hybrid: a modern, experimental biologist with a naturalist's sensibilities.
In this extraordinary memoir, the award-winning author shares the ways in which his relationship with his father, combined with his unique childhood, molded him into the scientist, and man, he is today. From Gerd's days as a soldier in Europe and the family's daring escape from the Red Army in 1945 to the rustic Maine farm they came to call home, Heinrich relates it all in his trademark style, making science accessible and awe-inspiring.
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