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The Company of Swans
The Company of Swans
Nov 17, 2024 1:27 AM

Author:Jim Crumley,Harry Brockway

The Company of Swans

This beautiful record, on fine paper, is Crumley's homage to these noble creatures, but it is also an elegy, a love song to one swan whose silent tragedy he watched from one season to the next.

‘A small mound on white feathers lies on a tussock of grass made grey by a Highland winter. It is all the monument there will ever be to the life of a swan.’

With these words, and those that follow, Jim Crumley has ensured that there will be a more enduring witness to the life of this swan, and of all swans, than that pyre of white feathers.

Crumley watches, year in year out, as a pair of mute swans struggles, against the odds, to raise young on a wild patch of lock. But the pen starts to lose her eggs to predators; and the cob begins to disappear for longer and longer periods. Until comes the day when a third swan, stronger and younger than the first pen, appears at the other end of the loch.

This journal of a swan-watcher, as he calls himself, is an elegy to these noble creatures; and most poignantly it is a memorial to one swan, whose silent drama he has recorded.

Reviews

A book to be treasured

—— Rosamund Young, author of The Secret Life of Cows

It's lovely. So gentle and understated, and yet so poignant and connected.

—— Chris Packham, author of Fingers in the Sparkle Jar

This is only a short tale, but it is delicately told, and the fate of the abandoned mate is movingly described

—— The Times

With exquisite engravings by Harry Brockway [this] is a perfect miniature... [Crumley's] prose style remains as elegant as his white-plumed subjects

—— Leslie Duncan , Glasgow Herald

You will want to read it again and again... a lovely book

—— Andrew Currie

Jim Crumley is the pre-eminent Scottish nature writer

—— Guardian

Extremely well written and beautifully illustrated

—— Colin Gibson , Dundee Courier

The best nature writer working in Britain today

—— Los Angeles Times

Enchanting

—— Good Book Guide

Crumley conveys the wonder of the natural world with honesty and passion and, yes, poetry

—— Susan Mansfield , Scottish Review of Books

Virtuoso writing... Jim Crumley's books come from an intelligence drawn from place

—— BBC Countryfile

A highly original reflection on military rivalries – and on the beauty of compacted sea ice and diamond northern skies.

—— Lorna Bradbury , World of Cruising

A powerful and stirring account.

—— Nautilus International Telegraph

A brief but compelling journey.

—— Clare Saxby , The Times Literary Supplement

Tim has been an astute observer of both the successes and the excesses of Silicon Valley. This provocative book distils the lessons he has learned about the power of technology to shape our economy and our lives.

—— Hal Varian, Chief Economist, Google

If anyone knows how to leverage the power of social media, it’s Tim O’Reilly.

—— Fast Company

Draws on decades of experience covering tech to illustrate how increasingly intelligent machines are changing the way we work and how they could impact the way we address our most pressing social concerns.

—— Publishers Weekly

O’Reilly highlights the big (and sometimes unexpected) questions we really should be asking about the future of tech, how we shape it, regulate it, and ensure it has the values we want for business, government and society.

—— Best Books on Innovation , Nesta

If you’ve heard the term Open Source software or Web 2.0 then you’re familiar with the work of Tim O’Reilly, who’s had a big hand in framing each of those even bigger ideas, shaping the debate about the future of the present day enchantment with technology.

—— Anne McElvoy, BBC Radio 3 , Free Thinking

O’Reilly has an uncanny knack for charting what’s ahead. In WTF?, he shows us know he does it. At a time of sweeping change, it is a bracing and an exhilarating read.

—— Anne-Marie Slaughter, President and CEO, New America

Excellent . . . Tim knows this stuff as well as anyone, and there’s never been a more important moment to understand the issues raised in this book.

—— Quartz

For more than two decades, Tim O’Reilly has been the conscience of the tech industry . . . His new book WTF? seizes on this singular moment in history, in which just about everything makes us say “WTF?”

—— Wired

One of the biggest names in technology.

—— BBC World Service , Click

O’Reilly’s vision is more Utopian than dystopian, even downright optimistic in a roundabout, creative-destruction sort of way. The positive outlook is refreshing and engaging.

—— Kirkus Reviews

No one is better at understanding the future than Tim O’Reilly. He has an intuitive feel and a deep knowledge of technology. This book makes sense of the astonishing transformations that are happening around us and is an indispensable guidebook to tomorrow.

—— Walter Isaacson

Yong has captured the essence of this exciting field, expressing the enthusiasm and wonder that the scientific community feels when working with the microbiome. It is rare that a writer has the capacity to speak to the public and the scientific world with equanimity; Yong has succeeded in delivering a compelling and informative exploration of a vast research field and a fundamental work that can stand as textbook and a rip-roaring read!

—— Professor Jack Gilbert, University of Chicago

With a simply wonderful book, Ed Yong opens the doorway to a hidden world around and inside us. He's smart, he's witty, and he's at the cutting edge. You could not get a better guide.

—— Tim Harford, author of The Undercover Economist Strikes Back and Messy

Ed Yong is one of our finest young explainers of science—wicked smart, broadly informed, sly, savvy, so illuminating. And this is an encyclopedia of fascinations—a teeming intellectual ecosystem, a keen book on the intricacies of the microbiome and more.

—— David Quammen, author of The Song of the Dodo and Spillover

This compelling and beautifully written book will change the way people look at the world around, and within, them. It provides an insight into the latest research in the field, and into the people doing the work, that is unmatched by any other book on the microbiome to date. Certainly among the best books in an increasingly crowded field and written with a true passion for and understanding of the microbiome.

—— Professor Rob Knight, University of California

A whistle-stop tour of the microbial world for the non-expert… Yong has won numerous awards for his science writing…it doesn’t take long to realise why.

—— Florence Greatix , Chemistry World

A marvellous book! Ed Yong’s brilliant gift for storytelling and precise writing about science converge in I Contain Multitudes to make the invisible and tiny both visible and mighty. A unique, entertaining, and smart read.

—— Jeff Vandermeer, author of the Southern Reach Trilogy

[A] magnificent revaluation of bacteriology.

—— Kate Womersley , Spectator

This is a book of wonder.

—— Bookseller

A state-of-the art look at what we know about microbes… Yong makes difficult concepts and scientific terms easy to understand – and his excitement at the variety and wonder of nature makes him an enthusiastic and engaging writer’

—— Kate Whiting , UK Press Syndication

The complex relationships between microbes and their environments are explored with rigour and humour.

—— Bridie Pritchard , Northern Echo

A deep and sensible dive in to this complex and fascinating dimension of biology.

—— Irish Times, Book of the Year

[It] is superbly judged. It brilliantly synthesises the surprising and recently-revealed inter-dependencies of visible and invisible organisms… Look out for it on numerous book prize shortlists in 2017.

—— Guardian, Book of the Year

Yong will make you think about yourself – and the world around you – in a different way.

—— Brad Davies , i

It is a fascinating account of the unseen creatures that live within and all around us. Yong takes us on this journey through the microscope to discover the most recent research from scientists all round the world and tell us of the secrets that are being discovered about microbes… Yong writes with an engaging and eloquent style and makes the science in here really accessible. Well worth reading.

—— Paul Cheney , Nudge

Yong’s enthusiasm for bacteria is infectious, as he describes the beauty of luminescent bacteria in the Hawaiian bobtail squid and the benefits of our microscopic neighbours.

—— Jane Shilling , Daily Mail

A master class in popular scientific education.

—— Simon Shaw , Mail on Sunday

Yong made me think “wow” over and over again. He tells us that there is a universe of tiny things. We should think about them.

—— William Leith , Evening Standard

Enlightenment Now seeks to undo, with facts and figures, the pessimism that has paralysed the world ... We must read this book and absorb its message

—— El Pais (Colombia)

Guys, it's really not that bad. In fact, it's the best it's ever been ... Pinker urges people to look at the bigger picture and dive into the data

—— New York Post

Things are not as bad as your Facebook news feed makes them seem ... a cheerful, contrarian tract for dark times

—— Niall Ferguson , Boston Globe

Compelling ... At a moment when liberal Enlightenment values are under attack, from the right and the left, this is a very important contribution ... An impressive and useful accomplishment

—— Atlantic
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