Surveys the practical and symbolic uses of falcons in human culture, bridging science and cultural history. This book describes the complete history of the bird, ranging across the globe, incorporating the scientific discoveries. It is for students of cultural history, lovers of the countryside, birdwatchers, and others interested in falcons.

As a child the author was determined to become a falconer. She learned the arcane terminology and read all the classic books, including T H White's tortured masterpiece, The Goshawk, which describes White's struggle to train a hawk as a spiritual contest. This book offers an account of his struggle with grief.

Product Description: Before Helen Macdonald rose to international acclaim with her "beautiful and nearly feral" (New York Times) bestselling memoir H Is for Hawk, she wrote a collection of poetry, Shaler's Fish.In robust, lyrical verse, Shaler's Fish roams both the outer and inner landscapes of the poet's universe, seamlessly fusing reflections on language, science, and literature, with the loamy environments of the natural worlds around her...read more

Product Description: Before Helen Macdonald rose to international acclaim with her "beautiful and nearly feral" (New York Times) bestselling memoir H Is for Hawk, she wrote a collection of poetry, Shaler's Fish.In robust, lyrical verse, Shaler's Fish roams both the outer and inner landscapes of the poet's universe, seamlessly fusing reflections on language, science, and literature, with the loamy environments of the natural worlds around her...read more

When Helen Macdonald's father died suddenly on a London street, she was devastated. An experienced falconer captivated by hawks since childhood, she'd never before been tempted to train one of the most vicious predators: the goshawk. But in her grief, she saw that the goshawk's fierce and feral anger mirrored her own. Resolving to purchase and raise the deadly creature as a means to cope with her loss, she adopted Mabel and turned to the guidance of The Once and Future King author T. H. White's chronicle The Goshawk to begin her journey into Mabel's world. Projecting herself "in the hawk's wild mind to tame her" tested the limits of Macdonald's humanity.By turns heartbreaking and hilarious, this book is an unflinching account of bereavement, a unique look at the magnetism of an extraordinary beast, and the story of an eccentric falconer and legendary writer. Weaving together obsession, madness, memory, myth, and history, H Is for Hawk is a distinctive, surprising blend of nature writing and memoir from a very gifted writer.

Looks particularly at the activities of British surgeons in nineteenth-century Van Diemen's Land, a penal colony in which a ready supply of bodies was available. This book tells a story of how medical men obtained the corpses upon which they worked before the use of human remains was regulated.

Product Description: Bone collecting, body snatching, and the buying and selling of human remains have seldom been acknowledged as vital parts in the development of Western medicine. In this elegantly written account, the British medical systems' dependence upon the penal colony of Tasmania for anatomy training is explored...read more