The Snoring Bird: My Family's Journey Through a Century of Biology (P.S.) | 
 enlarge | Author: Bernd Heinrich
Publisher: Harper Perennial
Category: Book
List Price: $15.95
Buy New: $9.34
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Avg. Customer Rating:  11 reviews
Sales Rank: 91726
Media: Paperback
Edition: Reprint
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 512
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.9
Dimensions (in): 7.9 x 5.2 x 1.5
ISBN: 006074216X
Dewey Decimal Number: 920
EAN: 9780060742164
ASIN: 006074216X
Publication Date: July 1, 2008
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Shipping: International shipping available
Condition: BRAND NEW
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Product Description
Although Gerd Heinrich, a devoted naturalist, specialized in wasps, Bernd Heinrich tried to distance himself from his "old-fashioned" father, becoming a hybrid: a modern, experimental biologist with a naturalist's sensibilities. In this extraordinary memoir, the award-winning author shares the ways in which his relationship with his father, combined with his unique childhood, molded him into the scientist, and man, he is today. From Gerd's days as a soldier in Europe and the family's daring escape from the Red Army in 1945 to the rustic Maine farm they came to call home, Heinrich relates it all in his trademark style, making science accessible and awe-inspiring.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 6 more reviews...
 Terrible Title for a fantastic book June 27, 2008
The Snoring Bird is a terrible title for a wonderful book like this! I can promise that it is anything but a snore. It made me laugh, learn, think, remember history and I had to blow my nose at the end and wipe my eyes too.
Anyone who enjoyed Zen and the art of Motorcycle maintenance will go wild reading a science family's history as refugees. What it means to be passionate about science. This book will become a classic even if it is not published in different colors.
What do I do now that I finished reading this great story?
 depressing June 13, 2008
1 out of 2 found this review helpful
I returned the book after reading perhaps 50 pages. The author and I are about the same age and I found the book terribly depressing because it reminded me of the horrible time after WWII in Germany (I was there as a child, also). I have other books by the author; some more enjoyable than others. This one was not!
 Bit of a slog April 23, 2008
2 out of 3 found this review helpful
Have been a fan of many of Heinrich's works. While I found this interesting from a curiosity perspective, it was a grind for me to get through some of it. Skipped the last 50 pages about his father (war stories)and then skipped another 30 or so pages about BH's career. Tighter editting and a tighter focus on father/son relationship would have made this a winner.
Biology, family and history make for a fascinating and well written story December 12, 2007
2 out of 2 found this review helpful
Bernd Heinrich is a very well known scientist, one whose work spans the fields of natural history, ecology, physiology and animal behavior. He is also a fine nature writer with a multitude of well-received books to his credit. As such, he is uniquely qualified to have written a book about the major changes in biology that have occurred over the last century.
However, there is much more that makes this book fascinating. The history of biology that serves as a major theme in this book also parallels the history of his family, and it is through weaving the story of 20th century biology with his family story and modern world history that Heinrich has produced an excellent book well worth reading for the multiple strands that are woven into it.
His father, Gerd, an old style systematic biologist/naturalist, is a collector and expert on the taxonomy of parasitic wasps. He combines his passion for this type of biology with his role as the head of a German family living on their ancestral estate in an area that had become a region of Poland following WWI.
Gerd is in many ways typical of his generation. He is formed by the old Prussian values, honor, duty, doing things right, with a tendency of being rigid. Socially, he seems quite at home in his role as master of the estate and pater familias. In addition to his adventures as a WWI aviator, he has a history of being quite the ladies man. He can be selfish, or sometimes quite humane or even noble.
Most importantly, he is a collector of nature who really has a passion for the subject. He is an accomplished traveler, whose collecting for major museums has taken him to places far away from the European world of his family and upbringing. He is rigid and duty bound, but also a free spirit in a way, for good and for bad.
The first part of the book provides this essential background for the reader. Both from the comments that Heinrich makes and the sleuthing that he did into family history, the book makes an interesting read for those interested in a world now long gone.
Bernd, born into a world that is being irrevocably altered by the rise of totalitarianism, is the heir to his father and a long tradition. As a small child he is torn away from his ancestral home by events beyond the family control. These include not just the arrival of the Nazis, but also of the Red Army from which the family flees and eventually settles in a forest cabin in the northwest of Germany, just as the Iron Curtain falls on Europe.
The portion of the book dealing with the flight from the Red Army and the years spent trying to survive famine and a war-torn Germany is gripping, and in a way sets the stage for the rest of the book. Particularly interesting are the events of history and their effects on the family, as well as Bernd's experiences living in the forest. Here he first forms his attachment to the world of plants and animals by absorbing the world around him and the knowledge passed on from his father.
Eventually the family moves to Maine and lives on a old farm. The father, now totally out of his cultural and scientific element, struggles to provide for his family and to continue with his passion for his style of biology. Bernd grows into an odd German-Polish-Maine-woodsman with a passion and talent for not only modern physiological ecology but also for distance running. As he matures in his own life and career, he sometimes comes into conflict with his father, personally and professionally, as their worlds move apart.
Toward the close of the book, Bernd begins to come full circle. He matures and has his own life experiences. He is better able to understand his own roots, scientifically and family-wise, and to come to a mature understanding of his father, both as a scientist and a person.
I found the final chapters where he revisits the old estate in Poland and his father's scientific work to be very interesting. He also has a touching closing, where he looks at his father as a person and talks of his habits, virtues and foibles. One gets the sense that he is able to both admire the virtues and forgive the vices of the man who was his father and a major influence on his life.
One might be critical of the author, or of various members of the Heinrich family, but one does come away with a picture of them as real human beings, with virtues and vices. This is not a tell-all or some sort of feel-good confessional story.
Instead, it is a view of trends in 20th century biology and a family who have been intimately involved with nature during an historically turbulent period. I found it to be a fascinating read, and highly recommend it.
Slice of life December 2, 2007
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
The Snoring Bird is immediately and continuously absorbing, amusing, fascinating and satisfying from the first page to the last. I often shook my head in astonishment at the amazing series of events that kept the Heinrichs alive through two wars, and dangerous expeditions. Bernd has a light touch with his writing that guides the reader painlessly through minefields of insect taxonomy, family stories and epic journeys. Clearly he doesn't know what to think about his father, who nourished him, neglected him, saved him, damaged him--it's an incomprehensible mix that can't ever be sorted out. His mother is not as difficult for him to sort out, somehow. She didn't have the central role to play in his life. My only gripe comes fairly early on, with Bernd's seemingly off-hand discussion of Wallace and Darwin, and the priority for discovering the mechanism of evolution. Experts on both have devoted many pages of much more nuanced discussion than he gives it. I took it as a possible clue to his personality, and it caused me to lose some confidence in him. But it was mostly restored by his wonderful account, which only flags near the end, which is typical of people too. As his father reaches old age there is just not a lot of excitement like when he was a WWI pilot, or doing crazy things with bears and panthers. Bernd's understated way of writing about very painful events may not be very good for one's psychological health, but it makes the text much less of a harrowing experience for the reader, who can only guess at the incredible pain he went through with parents like this. So, this is one of the best books I have ever read. It's phenomenal in its scope across two generations, wealth of how life was in Germany during the two wars, what science is, how naturalist think, what life was like for a child immigrant, what it's like to live with a narcissist--or whatever he was, I'm not sure.
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