Where The Wild Things Were

Will Stolzenburg is one of the better science journalists I have crossed paths with. His new book is bound to make big impacts. Where the wild things were came out last week and people are talking alot about it (including in my inbox). Will takes us around the world answering the "So what?" to the fact that we now live in a world without predators. Required reading for every citizen in my view. Below is a book summary, and visit the book's website for more information.

It wasn't so long ago that wolves and great cats, monstrous fish and flying raptors ruled the peak of nature's food pyramid. Not so anymore. All but exterminated, these predators of the not-too-distant past have been reduced to minor players of the modern era.

'So what?' asks wildlife journalist Will Stolzenburg, who follows in the wake of nature's topmost carnivores, and finds in their absence a world of chaos. As the great predators go missing, an emerging cadre of concerned scientists is uncovering trouble in the biosphere at large.

From obscure jungles of Venezuela to stormy North Pacific coasts, hallowed vistas of Yellowstone to the back yards of suburban America, Stolzenburg traverses aberrant empires of pest and plague, a new world order of murderous deer and rogue raccoons, pathological monkeys and exploding urchins. Here is a startling tour through dying forests and barren seascapes, through nightmarish landscapes starving for those missing masters of the hunt. For anyone who has seldom given thought to the meat-eating beasts so recently lacking from the web of life, here is a world of reason to think again.