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Outdoors & Nature |
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Pigeons: The Fascinating Saga of the World's Most Revered and Reviled Bird
written by Andrew D. Blechman
Studio : Grove Press
by Grove Press
Publisher : Grove Press
Released : 2007-10-10
Availability : Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Number of Items : 1
EAN : 9780802143280
Avg. Customer Rating: (based on 26 reviews)
List Price : $14.00
Our Price : $4.99
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Product Description |
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Pigeons have been worshipped as fertility goddesses and revered as symbols of peace. Domesticated since the dawn of man, they’ve been used as crucial communicators in war by every major historical superpower from ancient Egypt to the United States and are credited with saving thousands of lives. Charles Darwin relied heavily on pigeons to help formulate and support his theory of evolution. Yet today they are reviled as “rats with wings.” Author Andrew D. Blechman traveled across the United States and Europe to meet with pigeon fanciers and pigeon haters in a quest to find out how we came to misunderstand one of mankind’s most helpful and steadfast companions. Pigeons captures a Brooklyn man’s quest to win the Main Event (the pigeon world’s equivalent of the Kentucky Derby), as well as a convention dedicated to breeding the perfect bird. Blechman participates in a live pigeon shoot where entrants pay $150; he tracks down Mike Tyson, the nation’s most famous pigeon lover; he spends time with Queen Elizabeth’s Royal Pigeon Handler; and he sheds light on a radical “pro-pigeon underground’ in New York City. In Pigeons, Blechman tells for the first time the remarkable story behind this seemingly unremarkable bird. |
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Great Book |
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For such a simple subject this was really fascinating. A great read, I finished it in under a week. Highly recomended for urbanites, animal lovers and natural history buffs. |
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Pigeons and Me |
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What a crisis for me! I always looked at pigeons as objects to be avoided in my urban environment. Now, after many years, I know what I have been missing-they are exciting birds that offer more than they take.Blechman has written a book that will astonish you by what you do not know about these common birds. I am now able to be eloquent about pigeons and enjoy them while sitting in the park. Thank you Mr. Blechman. |
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Cooing about Pigeons |
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It's rare that any book I'm reading gets a rise out of people when they see the cover. Not so with "Pigeons." Many of the onlookers gave the impression that I was just a few pages short from being placed in a straitjacket and escorted into a padded room. Mr. Blechman's book was well worth the ridicule. A mild curiosity made me pick up the book and purchase it. It was money well spent. Mr. Blechman does an excellent job educating the reader and reporting in a breezy manner the many kinds of relationships between people and pigeons. It's unlikely you'll ever look at this bird in the same way. Highly entertaining and informative. |
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The Ways We Make Pigeons Our Projects |
There isn't quite as much information as I would have liked about pigeons themselves here - their physiology, their psychology, their habits. But then, that really isn't the point of this book. Blechman's aim is more to take us on a tour of what we do to and with pigeons, of the various ways we continue to turn them into our projects. On this score, he has written a very interesting, wide-ranging book. It will leave you sadder but wiser - if not always about pigeon nature - certainly about human nature.
He infiltrated (and in many cases, that is literally the right word) the inner sanctums of a variety of pigeon enthusiasts and shows us the world from their often obsessed point of view.
He takes us inside the world of pigeon breeders, giving us a view of some of the fantastical pigeon forms that have been created through years of dedicated interbreeding - forms clearly no longer able to survive in the wild. He takes us into the world of pigeon racers, whose lives are lived on their rooftops, with stopwatches and binoculars in hand. He walks us along with sometimes dotty, sometimes themselves nearly homeless pigeon "protectors" - eccentric individuals who will NOT stop feeding the birds, even though that is often not even in the best interests of the pigeons themselves. He interviews people charged with exterminating pigeons from the urban landscape. He even managed to gain an uneasy foothold in the waning, but still secretively active world of the pigeon shoot - where pigeons, usually culled from urban settings, are released into the rural wilds to be shot at en masse.
"Pigeons" also includes a surprising chapter on Mike Tyson, a pigeon fancier on the side. There is a lot of unexpected suspense here as we breathlessly follow along behind Blechman, wondering if he'll be able to break through Tyson's phalanx of bodyguards and frontmen to get an interview with the boxer.
There are a couple of minor problems with this book. Blechman occasionally creates confusion by failing to make proper paragraph breaks. Then a second failing is the lack of pictures. I'd like to have seen some of these rarified forms and activities he was describing.
Again, be prepared to feel somewhat depressed by the end of this book. It might cause you to sigh along with Pascal about man's inability to just "sit quietly in a room alone." Our relationship with pigeons shows clearly how we always have to be up and about, altering our landscape, imposing ourselves on it, interfering with nature's ways.
If you want a book that admittedly anthropomorphizes pigeons to some degree, but that in general offers a better view of pigeons on their own terms, you might try to get hold of a copy of "Diary of a Pigeon Watcher" by Doris Schwerin. Then if you want to read about another creature that inhabits our urban landscape with us and that is so often the target of our drive to make projects, you might read "Rats" by Robert Sullivan. |
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I'm a pigeon convert |
Having developed a deep dislike for pigeons after repeated close encounters with wings and droppings on the sidewalks of San Francisco, I picked up "Pigeons" on a whim, hoping that trading disdain for respect might prevent me from a recurring impulse to punt a bird into traffic. I no longer want to kick a pigeon -- and I'm surely anthropomorphising, but it seems the birds have newfound respect for my space as well; rather, my violent urge has been replaced with a desire to lure a few through my front door so I can try the pot pie recipe on page 219.
Author Andrew Blechman has gone to great pains to cover seemingly every facet of the pigeon: racing, hunting, military service, beauty shows, breeding, pigeon mythology and pigeon eradication. Along the way we meet Charles Darwin, B.F. Skinner, Ernest Hemingway, Woody Allen, Paris Hilton, Mike Tyson (well, almost) and a type of pigeon called Naked Neck, which originated in Transylvania and through some mutation possesses no feathers between its chin and breastbone.
One thing is clear here; though ordinary city-dwelling pigeons are mainly gray in color, there are no gray areas when it comes to the perception of these critters, viewed both as "rats with wings" and goddesses, and little in between. When Blechman discusses pigeon racing, I am reminded of children's beauty pageants and the sexually repressed collectors in "Orchid Thief;" cheating, obsession and murderous intentions saturate all three activities. Pigeon racing might be no more bizarre than dressing your 5-year-old like a Vegas showgirl, but it's the only undertaking in which the subject is, to borrow the book's phrasing, so reviled by those not involved, yet so revered by its participants -- even at the expense of healthy human relations. It's akin to conducting a bedbug bed-bleeding contest. What makes it even stranger is we find that the dove of peace used to mark weddings, or messenger doves credited with saving a number of American soldiers' lives during World War II, is basically the same as a sweatsock pigeon pecking at a burrito wrapper while hopping on its remaining leg in a puddle of urine somewhere downtown right now. |
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