Tropical Nature - by Adrian Forsyth & Ken Miyata (Paperback)

Book Synopsis

A lively, lucid portrait of the tropics as seen by two uncommonly observant and thoughtful field biologists. Its seventeen marvelous essays introduce the habitats, ecology, plants, and animals of the Central and South American rainforest. Includes a lengthy appendix of practical advice for the tropical traveler.

Review Quotes

Newsweek Tropical Nature...seeks to provoke curiosity about the forests -- not just provide facts about them -- and succeeds splendidly....Tropical Nature evokes the magic and wonder of a world completely contained within itself.

Philadelphia Inquirer ...one of the best natural-history books in recent years. Lyrical, richly detailed and delightful to read.

Scientific American In 17 chapters, each a brief essay on tropical nature observed, these two young field biologists have made a model of contemporary natural history, cheerfully speculative, concerned as much with large pattern as with diversity, chemically informed, thoroughly ecological and Darwinian to the core.

Smithsonian It invites an appreciation of biology as few other books do and does so with extraordinary grace and humor.

E. O. Wilson Tropical Nature is superior by virtue of its freshness and authority. It is an account of the extraordinary richness of the tropical forests by two gifted young biologists who have recently experienced it and are experts on their subject. They write with the crispness of journalists sending dispatches from the field.

Ernst Mayr Combines excellent science, often based on original observations, with a warm sympathy for creatures big and small. A worthy successor to the writings of the great naturalists of the American tropics. I know of no better introduction to tropical biology.

About the Author

Adrian Forsyth holds a PhD in biology from Harvard University. He won the Canadian National Magazine Award for Science Writing in 1982 and 1983, the first author to win the award twice.