Excerpt from Crossings by Ben Goldfarb , plus links to reviews, author biography & more

"Morphologically, these are not the same birds anymore," Brown said. But it seemed to me they were also different in some deeper, more metaphysical sense. Centuries ago, before we paved North America, cliff swallows had existed largely beyond human influence; now they were so enmeshed in our world that our infrastructure had infiltrated their DNA. Cliff swallows were a success story, rare beneficiaries of concrete and steel. Yet their triumph had come at a cost—to the long-winged martyrs culled from the population and to the birds' altered genes themselves. Cliff swallows had survived, but as a changed thing. They had been shaped, subtly but intimately, by the road.

Excerpted from Crossings by Ben Goldfarb . Copyright © 2023 by Ben Goldfarb . Excerpted by permission of W.W. Norton & Company. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.