Sy Montgomery, Jack E. Davis & Tony Hiss: A Conversation

Tony Hiss is the author of 15 books, including The Experience of Place. He was a staff writer at The New Yorker for more than 30 years, a visiting scholar at New York University for 25 years, and has lectured around the world. Beginning in the vast North American Boreal Forest that stretches through Canada and roving across the continent – from the Northern Sierra to Alabama’s Paint Rock Forest, and from the Appalachian Trail to a ranch in Mexico – Rescuing the Planet: Protecting Half the Land to Heal the Earth (Vintage) chronicles Hiss’ journey to take stock of the “superorganism” that is Earth: its land, its elements, its plants and animals, its most significant threats, and what we can do to keep it, and ourselves, alive. Hiss not only invites us to understand the scope and gravity of the problems we face, but also makes a case for why protecting half the land is the way to fix those problems. He highlights the work of the many groups already involved in this fight, such as the Indigenous Leadership Initiative, the Yellowstone to Yukon Conservation Initiative, and the global animal tracking project I.C.A.R.U.S.

Jack E. Davis is a professor of environmental history at the University of Florida, and the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Gulf: The Making of An American Sea and An Everglades Providence: Marjory Stoneman Douglas and the American Environmental Century. In The Bald Eagle: The Improbable Journey of America’s Bird (Liveright), Davis takes readers from before the nation’s founding through inconceivable resurgences of this enduring all-American species. He contrasts the age when native peoples lived beside it peacefully with that when others – whether through hunting bounties or DDT pesticides – twice pushed the species to the brink of extinction. Americans have celebrated the bald eagle as majestic and noble, yet savaged this national symbol as a malicious predator of livestock and, falsely, a snatcher of babies. Filled with stories of Founding Fathers, The Bald Eagle is a cultural and natural history demonstrating how this bird’s wondrous journey may inspire us today as we grapple with environmental peril on a larger scale.

Sy Montgomery is a naturalist, documentary scriptwriter, and author of 31 nonfiction books for adults and children, including The Hummingbirds’ Gift; The Soul of an Octopus, and the memoir The Good Good Pig, which was a New York Times bestseller. After spending a day at falconer Nancy Cowan’s farm, home to a dozen magnificent birds of prey, Montgomery started a deep love affair with hawks. Cowan allowed her to work with Jazz, a feisty, 4-year-old female Harris’s hawk with a wingspan of more than 4 feet. Jazz – not a pet but a fierce predator – was willing to work with a human to hunt. When Jazz swept down and landed on Montgomery’s leather-gloved fist, she fell under the hawk’s spell. Over the next few years, she spent time with these creatures, getting to know their abilities and instincts. They are deeply emotional, quick to anger and frustration, and can hold a grudge for years. But they are also loyal and keenly aware of their surroundings. The Hawk’s Way: Encounters with Fierce Beauty (Atria Books), illustrated with 16 pages of color photographs, reveals the wondrous world of hawks and what they can teach us about nature, life, and love.