Escape Into A Wild Read This Summer!
“Deity, avatar, victim, and survivor, the coyote is all of these things and more,” according to Dan Flores, who is an historian and author of many books in the American West, including Coyote America: A Natural and Supernatural History, our summer selection for America’s Wild Read. It is a New York Times Best Seller and was a Finalist for the PEN/E.O. Wilson Literary Science Writing Award. Coyotes haven’t just survived, they have thrived and expanded all across North America. Coyote America is a remarkable biography of this adaptive and resilient animal, blending history, biology and folklore.
Coyote America offers not only a history of the coyote in America, but of the humans who have interacted with them through a history of public land management and the environmental movement. Understanding the changes in how the United States has thought about, studied, controlled, and preserved wildlife is critical to the coyote’s story. Continuing on our themes from Eager by Ben Goldfarb, coyotes are a keystone species with which humans have developed an antagonistic relationship — but their adaptations and innate behavior make them exceedingly difficult to control, perhaps coyotes even more so than beavers! Coyotes have been explicitly persecuted as predators by state and government agencies throughout history. Dan Flores writes that ultimately, coyotes have won the war waged against them, they’re survivors, and our best option is coexistence.
For FWS employees, if you would like to borrow a copy visit our library catalog and email megan_burdi@fws.gov, pending availability. For the general public, Coyote America can be found at your local library or book store.
On Thursday, September 2nd we are hosting a Book Discussion via Zoom open to all — more information to follow. There will also be a list of discussion questions posted soon if you’d like to go through those as you read.
Brought to you by the USFWS Conservation Library, America’s Wild Read is a virtual book club where we aim to inspire you to connect with the outdoors and nature through literature. We hope you will read along with us as we feature various conservation books every quarter — contemporary, traditional, new, and classic.
