The Book of Flaco

A Parable of the Urban Wild

David Gessner

$44.99

Hardback

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English

Carolina Wren Press
03 April 2025

Birds (ornithology); Conservation of the environment; Wildlife: birds & birdwatching

The story of Flaco, the Eurasian eagle-owl who escaped from Central Park Zoo and captured the hearts and imaginations of millions of followers around the world, with 32 pages of stunning color photographs.

This is a parable of freedom, wildness, and our urban ecosystems. Flaco has been dubbed ""the world's most famous bird."" From the night in February of 2023 when vandals cut a hole in his cage until his death a year later in a courtyard on the Upper West Side, his is a story full of adventure and unexpected turns.

Nature writer David Gessner chronicles the year-long odyssey of Flaco and the human drama that followed the owl who captured the imaginations of New Yorkers and people around the world. Though he'd spent his life in a cage, Flaco learned to survive in New York City by eating rats, squirrels, and birds. He was an immigrant coming from elsewhere to make it in the big city. Central Park, the island of green in an urban sea, was his new home territory.

Flaco's urban adventure brought controversy, pitting those who felt he should be returned to the safety of the zoo against those who created the ""Free Flaco"" movement. The birding world was fractured over the ethics of the online sharing of his location that brought scores of enthusiasts to view him each day. And his end-with a grim necropsy revealing Flaco had suffered a viral infection from eating pigeons and had multiple rodenticides in his system-serves as a Rachel Carson-esque warning about the harm we've done to our urban environments, inspiring the passage of long-sought legislation protecting urban birds and regulations meant to reduce the use of rodenticides in New York City.

By: David Gessner
Imprint: Carolina Wren Press
Country of Publication: United States
Dimensions: Height: 203mm, Width: 127mm,
ISBN: 9781958888476
ISBN 10: 1958888478
Pages: 220
Publication Date: 03 April 2025
Audience: General/trade , ELT Advanced
Format: Hardback
Publisher's Status: Active

David Gessner is the author of thirteen books that blend a love of nature, humor, memoir, and environmentalism, including the New York Times bestsellingAll the Wild That Remains. Gessner is a professor at University of North Carolina Wilmington, where he also founded the literary magazineEcotone. His own magazine publications include pieces in the New York Times Magazine, Outside, Orion, and many other magazines. In 2017 he hosted the National Geographic Explorer show, The Call of the Wild.

Reviews for The Book of Flaco: A Parable of the Urban Wild

"Praise for David Gessner: ""For nature-writing enthusiasts, Gessner needs no introduction. His books and essays have in many ways redefined what it means to write about the natural world, coaxing the genre from a staid, sometimes wonky practice to one that is lively and often raucous.""--Washington Post ""A master essayist.""--Booklist ""David Gessner has been a font of creativity ever since the 1980s, when he published provocative political cartoons in that famous campus magazine, the Harvard Crimson. These days he's a naturalist, a professor and a master of the art of telling humorous and thought-provoking narratives about unusual people in out-of-the way-places.""--The San Francisco Chronicle"