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The Improbable Journey of America's Bird
by Jack E. Davis
From the Pulitzer Prize–winning author of The Gulf, a sweeping cultural and natural history of the bald eagle in America.
The bald eagle is regal but fearless, a bird you're not inclined to argue with. For centuries, Americans have celebrated it as "majestic" and "noble," yet savaged the living bird behind their national symbol as a malicious predator of livestock and, falsely, a snatcher of babies. Taking us from before the nation's founding through inconceivable resurgences of this enduring all-American species, Jack E. Davis contrasts the age when native peoples lived beside it peacefully with that when others, whether through hunting bounties or DDT pesticides, twice pushed Haliaeetus leucocephalus to the brink of extinction.
Filled with spectacular stories of Founding Fathers, rapacious hunters, heroic bird rescuers, and the lives of bald eagles themselves―monogamous creatures, considered among the animal world's finest parents―The Bald Eagle is a much-awaited cultural and natural history that demonstrates how this bird's wondrous journey may provide inspiration today, as we grapple with environmental peril on a larger scale.
What are you reading this week? And what did you think of last week’s books? (2/12/2026)
I'm still reading The Man in the High Castle . Also, I'm reading bit by bit The Bald Eagle by Jack Davis. It's everything you'd want to know about eagles. In the present chapter the founding fathers of our very young country are intent on creating and adopting an official seal for the U.S. (After...
-NanK
"Pulitzer Prize winner Davis...scores with this sweeping history of America's unofficial symbolic bird. Combining natural, political, and cultural histories, Davis offers a wealth of surprising information and demolishes popular misconceptions...This account soars." - Publishers Weekly (starred review)
"The author's consistently lively, captivating narrative celebrates the naturalists, scientists, activists, artists (Andy Warhol, among them), politicians, and breeders who have championed the extraordinary 'charismatic raptor.' A rousing tale of a species' survival." - Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
"This fascinating and readable work will appeal to fans of the majestic bald eagle and to those interested in the natural, cultural, and political history of the United States." - Library Journal
"Jack Davis shows us not only what bald eagles have meant to humans...but what it might feel like to be one." - Jonathan Meiburg, author of A Most Remarkable Creature
"In The Bald Eagle, Jack E. Davis pays magnificent tribute to the national symbol, weaving a richly layered story that spans the centuries and bridges patriotism, Native spirituality, environment carnage and, against all odds, ecological redemption that brought the eagle back to America's skies." - Scott Weidensaul, author of A World on the Wing
"In this stunning and insightful history, Jack Davis tells the captivating story of the often-misunderstood emperor of the sky, of its place in the natural order, of its brush with extinction, and of the welcome return of its shadow passing over us from on high." - Bill Souder, author of Under a Wild Sky
This information about The Bald Eagle was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Jack E. Davis is the author or editor of several books, including The Gulf: The Making of an American Sea, winner of the 2018 Pulitzer Prize in History, and The Bald Eagle: The Improbable Journey of America's Bird. His previous book, An Everglades Providence: Marjory Stoneman Douglas and the American Environmental Century, a dual biography of America's premier wetlands and the woman who led a movement to save them, won the gold medal in nonfiction from the Florida Book Awards. Davis, who writes mainly for an intellectually curious audience, has had fellowships at the MacDowell Colony and Escape to Create and, while writing The Bald Eagle, was a recipient of an Andrew Carnegie Fellowship.
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