{"product_id":"the-peregrine-isbn-9781590171332","title":"The Peregrine","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cb\u003eThis extraordinary, poetic portrait of two peregrine falcons is one of the most beloved works of nature writing ever published.\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eFrom fall to spring, J.A. Baker set out to track the daily comings and goings of  a pair of peregrine falcons across the flat fen lands of eastern England. He followed  the birds obsessively, observing them in the air and on the ground, in pursuit of  their prey, making a kill, eating, and at rest, activities he describes with an extraordinary  fusion of precision and poetry. And as he continued his mysterious private quest,  his sense of human self slowly dissolved, to be replaced with the alien and implacable  consciousness of a hawk.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e \u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eIt is this extraordinary metamorphosis, magical and terrifying,  that these beautifully written pages record.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\"It's a most incredible book. It has prose of the caliber that we have not seen since Joseph Conrad—an ecstasy of a delirious sort of love for what he observes.\" —Werner Herzog\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"This is not a book about watching a bird,\u003ci\u003e \u003c\/i\u003ebut a book about becoming a bird. . . . It’s a book that everyone who makes films should read.\" —Werner Herzog\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"[T]he book is a work of tireless outward observation, with an astonishingly inventive and precise prose style. . . . Baker’s feet may be on the ground, but his gaze is skyward, toward the birds he envies.\" \u003ci\u003e—\u003c\/i\u003eLisa Darms, \u003ci\u003eBookforum\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\"Remarkable . . . the lyrical prose hammers home the attraction of pitting predator against  quarry.\" \u003ci\u003e—The Daily Telegraph \u003c\/i\u003e(London)\u003cp\u003e\"A powerful evocation of East Anglia’s winter landscape, and an unforgettable portrait of a man’s passionate engagement with the natural world.\" —\u003ci\u003eLondon Review of Books\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"\u003ci\u003eThe Peregrine\u003c\/i\u003e should be known as one of the finest works on nature ever written. . . . His words—precise, lyrical and intensely felt—seem to have been selected as if their author were under huge pressure, both from the depth of his feelings for the bird and the weight of experience he wished to impart. . . . The only sadness about \u003ci\u003eThe Peregrine\u003c\/i\u003e is that its author is no longer with us to be honoured afresh for his achievement.\" —\u003ci\u003eBBC Wildlife Magazine\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"A nature study such as Mr. Baker has presented—not by any means restricted to the peregrine falcon—deserves warm praise for the remarkable perseverance and patience which has gone into its making, and when the observer is a gifted writer, as in the present instance, the result is even more gratifying.\" —Daniel A. Bannerman, \u003ci\u003eThe New York Review of Books\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"\u003ci\u003eThe Peregrine\u003c\/i\u003e is one of the most beautifully written, carefully observed and evocative wildlife accounts I have ever read. Mr. Baker’s patience, his discriminating and unsentimental eye, and his passionate deliberations are utterly captivating.\" —Barry Lopez\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"This book goes altogether outside the bird book into something less naïve, into literature, into a kind of universal rapport.\" —Geoffrey Grigson, The \u003ci\u003eSunday Times\u003c\/i\u003e (London)\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"[O]ne need not know a hawk from a handsaw to take pleasure and profit from the book. It is an account by a curious, complicated man of a curious, complicated phenomenon, that will involve, instruct and excite a reader who can never hope and may never want to share the writer’s experience.\" —Bil Gilbert, \u003ci\u003eWashington Post Book World\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"Mr. Baker is primarily a descriptive writer, and a good one, but his obsession has given him a kind of crazy empathy that lifts his book above mere observation.\" —\u003ci\u003eThe New Yorker\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"\u003ci\u003eThe Peregrine\u003c\/i\u003e by J.A. Baker . . . [is a] darkly poetic and episodic work about a man obsessively watching wild peregrine falcons in the British countryside. Written at a time when the extinction of the peregrine and nuclear apocalypse both seemed imminent, this is a book about the poetry of death and loss as much as it is about hawks.” —Helen Macdonald, \u003ci\u003e\u003ci\u003eThe Week\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cb\u003eJ. A. Baker\u003c\/b\u003e is also the author of \u003ci\u003eThe Hill of Summer.\u003c\/i\u003e He was a native of Essex, England.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eRobert Macfarlane\u003c\/b\u003e’s \u003ci\u003eMountains of the Mind \u003c\/i\u003e(2003), about wilderness and the Western imagination, won the Somerset Maugham Award and the Guardian First Book Award, among other prizes. He is also the author of \u003ci\u003eThe Old Ways\u003c\/i\u003e, \u003ci\u003eLandmarks\u003c\/i\u003e, \u003ci\u003eThe Lost Words\u003c\/i\u003e, and \u003ci\u003eUnderland\u003c\/i\u003e.","brand":"NYRB Classics","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":46302597939429,"sku":"NP9781590171332","price":17.95,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1842\/7735\/files\/9781590171332.jpg?v=1767740921","url":"https:\/\/k12savings.com\/products\/the-peregrine-isbn-9781590171332","provider":"K12savings","version":"1.0","type":"link"}