Highly original in its approach and a beautiful object in its own right, [The Shorebirds of North America] devotes itself to its subject, not only with unstinting effort, but also with a refined extravagance recalling the great tradition of the 19th-century luxury works on birds—the Goulds, Audubons, Elliots, and others….

Peter Matthiessen's general text takes the form of a prolonged essay, which has already appeared, with unsubstantial differences, in The New Yorker. Mr. Matthiessen is a writer of considerable experience and at his best produces a flowing, poetic style somewhat suggestive of Daphne DuMaurier. He devotes himself to the shorebirds—everything about shorebirds—with unflagging enthusiasm remarkable for its sustained pitch. It is possible, perhaps even probable, that many readers, swept along in this flow, will therefore follow him into areas they would never normally enter, and will acquire, in the process, not only a good deal of generalized and particulate information on shorebirds but, more importantly, a certain insight into what modern field biology is all about. Such readers should be warned that, while Mr. Matthiessen has obviously done an extraordinary amount of reading, he is as clearly not a trained biologist and his text abounds with small factual errors and conceptual near misses (occasionally the misses are wide). This will probably not be very important to many readers and is certainly not worth documenting in detail, but the warning should still be made. The book, fortunately, is abundantly documented, and the author's opinions (not always sound) clearly labeled as such.

Although he has obviously watched many shorebirds in many places (whose names he tends to drop), the author is not as thoroughly familiar with shorebirds in the field as is many a competent amateur, a fact he reveals in various small but telling ways. No alert veteran, for instance, could ever state that the northern phalarope (one of the most diminutive of shorebirds and the size of a house sparrow) is not "much larger than a robin."

As to Mr. Matthiessen's literary art, I have already said that at his best he is good. Opinions would certainly vary but I find his best too rare. In striving for constantly high-pitched effect he strains, becoming more preoccupied with words for their own sake than for their relevance and meaning; a profusion of idiotic combinations, scrambled metaphors and impenetrable meanings result. In this general vein, he coins the pretty and allegorically useful term "wind birds" for shorebirds (itself a pretty and allegorically useful term of long currency). Having coined it, he proceeds to beat it to death, and it can only be silly in his long discourses on reproductive biology, evolutionary history, behavioral adaptations, etc. And I absolutely balk at the description of an oyster as a "dour opponent."

Nevertheless, too few scientists can write better, or trouble themselves to, and Mr. Matthiessen, criticisms notwithstanding, has performed a distinct service in popularizing some important matters.