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The Extinction Club: A Tale of Deer, Lost Books, and a Rather Fine Canary Yellow Sweater Book
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Amazon Review
Robert Twigger isn't your typical nature writer, focusing intently on the life habits of an endangered and misunderstood species. In The Extinction Club he rambles and reflects his way all around his ostensible topic--the nearly extinct Pere David's deer. In fact, he spends the first fifty or so pages telling readers why he wrote the book, and musing on everything from libraries to his grandfather. It's a slow start for readers curious about the deer, but once Twigger begins divulging details about how the species, native to China, has survived in Bedfordshire, England, you'll be hooked. Twigger has a hipster's sense of irony and a postmodern storyteller's keen sense of the absurd, allowing him to avoid a lot of nature-writing clichés. Critics have accused him of being self-referential, and he does spend too much time in The Extinction Club describing meetings with publishers, his time at a survival camp, and his life in Oxford. But the book works in the end, both as a history of a little-known chapter of wildlife biology and as a meditation on nature and truth. --Therese Littleton
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Product Description
For one thousand years, the Milu -- an exotic species of deer with the neck of a camel, horns of a stag, feet of a cow, and tail of a donkey -- existed only in the Chinese emperor's private park in Beijing. But in the nineteenth century, a Basque missionary risked his life to obtain a specimen, then embalmed it and sent it to Paris.
The preserved remains caused quite a stir, and soon every major nation in Europe possessed a Milu. But most died quickly, and due to war -- most notably the Boxer Rebellion -- they became extinct in their native habitat as well. Yet the eleventh duke of Bedford was devoted to preserving the Milu. Under his care at Woburn Abbey, a herd flourished, and nearly a century later, in 1986, part of the British herd was returned to China.
In his fascinating tale, Robert Twigger poignantly recounts the story of this strange and rare animal while providing a riveting meditation on evolution, truth-telling, extinction, myth-making, and survival.
- 0060535962
- 9780060535964
- Robert Twigger
- 1 July 2003
- Perennial
- Paperback (Book)
- 240
- Reprint
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