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The I Index

Fuzz: When Nature Breaks the Law

Next in the queue

62

/100

I Index Overall Rating

Readers

29/100

Critics

94/100

Scholars

N/A

Author:

Mary Roach

Publisher:

W. W. Norton & Company

Date:

September 14, 2021

What's to be done about a jaywalking moose? A bear caught breaking and entering? A murderous tree? Three hundred years ago, animals that broke the law would be assigned legal representation and put on trial. These days, as Mary Roach discovers, the answers are best found not in jurisprudence but in science: the curious science of human-wildlife conflict, a discipline at the crossroads of human behavior and wildlife biology.

What The Reviewers Say

Peter Fish,
San Francisco Chronicle
Mary Roach is the Deborah Vance of science writing.
Julie Zickefoose,
The Wall Street Journal
Ms. Roach lets us ride in her pocket as she climbs into trucks with laconic wildlife officers, or kneels to puzzle out evidence at a training course on wildlife-attack forensics. She’s apparently fearless—who tries to order the deadly poison ricin online?—and always bemused. She’s Everywoman, gawping and giggling, then zeroing in on the heart of the matter with a satisfying summary—or a bemused shrug.
Vicki Constantine Croke,
The New York Times Book Review
The author Mary Roach made her reputation for witty, quirky and sometimes gross science writing in a series of snappily titled books.
Jake Cline,
Outside
... fascinating.