The Bald Eagle: The Improbable Journey of America’s Bird

Pulitzer Prize winner Davis (The Gulf), an environmental history professor at the University of Florida, scores with this sweeping history of America’s unofficial symbolic bird. Combining natural, political, and cultural histories, Davis offers a wealth of surprising information and demolishes popular misconceptions, dispelling, for example, the idea that the turkey was a candidate for the U.S. national bird. He covers the use of the eagle as a symbol of fidelity, self-reliance, and courage; describes once-held beliefs that it was a scavenging pest; and explains threats to its survival, both from hunters and pollutants, that almost made it extinct in the 20th century. As Davis recounts, the story of the bald eagle is a rare example of successful conservation: twice—through the Bald Eagle Protection Act of 1940 and the ban on DDT in 1972—the creature was pulled back from the brink and has since gone on to achieve a sustainable population. Well-timed humor—as when Davis notes that the fiercely loud cry of the bald eagle in the opening of The Colbert Report was actually the squawk of a red-tailed hawk—keeps things moving, and his writing is vivid: “On descent, primary flight feathers splay and twist; tail feathers pitch upward and downward.” This account soars. Photos. Agent: Lisa J. Adams, Garamond Agency. (Mar.)