In a Patch of Fireweed: A Biologist's Life in the Field Review

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(More customer reviews)I was required to read excerpts from this book for a course I was taking, but found myself reading (even re-reading) the text for pleasure. Though the material may be, at times, a little too technical for the average reader, Heinrich, nonetheless brings the complexities of the natural realm to his readers in such a manner that draws the reader into the excitement of his own research and discoveries. The text is scientific, yet humorous whenever possible, and always insightful. Heinrich is a brilliant biologist with no less skill as a writer.

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Why would a grown man chase hornets with a thermometer, paint whirligig beetles bright red, or track elephants through the night to fill trash bags with their prodigious droppings? Some might say--to advance science. Heinrich says--because it's fun.

Bernd Heinrich, author of the much acclaimed Bumblebee Economics, has been playing in the wilds of one continent or another all his life. In the process, he has become one of the world's foremost physiological ecologists. With In a Patch of Fireweed, he will undoubtedly become one of our foremost writers of popular science.

Part autobiography, part case study in the ways of field biology, In a Patch of Fireweed is an endlessly fascinating account of a scientist's life and work. For the author, it is an opportunity to report not just his results but the curiosity, humor, error, passion, and competitiveness that feed into the process of discovery. For the reader, it is simply a delight, a rare chance to share the perceptions of an unusual mind fully in tune with the inner workings of nature. Before his years of research in the woodlands and deserts of North America, the New Guinea highlands, and the plains of East Africa, Heinrich had a sense of the wild that few people in this century can know. He tells the whole story, from his refugee childhood hidden in a German forest, eating mice fried in boar fat, to his ongoing research in the woods surrounding his cabin in Maine.

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