Boria Sax

Boria Sax defines the scope of his book on the first page of his introduction: "This is what I call 'avian illumination' - an intense identification of a person, or group of persons, with counterparts among birds". While this is what his intention may be and technically can be used to describe the book, the subtitle actually may be a better explanation what the book is all about - it is all about the connection between humans and birds - from the early days of myths and early representation of birds on cave walls to the movies and conservation efforts of the 21st century and beyond.

The book contains 207 illustrations (129 of them in color), most of them at least half-page (with a lot of them being full page ones). None of them is specifically created for the book - they are reproductions of paintings and statues, photos and drawings from old books. The author tries to separate the book into 3 parts (Birds in Philosophy and Religion, Birds in History and Bird in Art) but they blend into each other and some references show up in multiple parts - sometimes because the work itself belongs to both (where do you draw the line between early myths and history or early art and religion) and sometimes because the work in question may be art (or tied to religion) but it is important in history.

Sax admits early in the book that he cannot cover the whole world - birds had been important for humanity pretty much at any time of its development as humans and each culture on Earth, regardless if it is still existing, seems to have at least a few myths about birds. But he does not let that stop him from bringing examples from everywhere - both from the past and from the present. While it does not make the books exhaustive, it does make it somewhat global and allows the reader to see some connections which are rarely seen - birds, as different as they are across the world, play a similar role for humans by just being there, in the air.

The book weaves a mix of mythology, art history (as it relates to birds), exploration of literature (both fiction and non-fiction) and social history to explore all kinds of relationships between humans and birds - here are the chicken and turkeys (and all other birds we eat), the falcons, eagles, vultures and the parrots, the captive birds and the migratory birds, the dodo and the wren. It starts in the caves of France and moves through the world, stopping by in Mesopotamia and the Far East, Africa and the Americas, Australia and New Zealand (not entirely chronologically in the early stages). It is the later historical times where the books gets more West-centric and explores the relationship between humans and birds mainly from the Western perspective - but then this is to be expected to some extent and it does touch on some other cultures occasionally.

The publisher (Reaktion Books) decided to use the heavy paper stock used usually for coffee table books and images inserts in non-fiction for the complete book which allowed the pictures to be printed where they belonged and to have them interspersed with the text. There are rarely 3 pages in a row without at least one image (the book has 374 pages of text outside of the notes (all of them about sources of specific information), the two indexes (general and index of birds) and the further reading recommendations) and each image has a caption (a few of them slightly incorrect even if the text above them cited it correctly - the editor probably should have taken another pass through the book). Just reading through the captions and looking at the images may be enough to appreciate what the book is about and its scope.

While the book could get repetitive in places (and Sax tried to get the book back to his definition of illumination in a somewhat clunky way occasionally), it is pretty informative and readable. I may have wished more details in some places (and less in others) but the scope of the book is enormous and choices always need to be made.

If one wants to explore further any of the covered topics, the further reading section has not only a pretty good list of books but also an explanation on why that book is there - something I wish more people producing recommendations will adopt as a practice - and is followed by a list of useful sites (with enough details to find them if the site moves one day).

Overall an interesting book if you are looking for the history of the connection between humans and birds - although we don't always end up looking like the more intelligent side of that pair. But then that's not unexpected.… (mehr)