Truly, David Quammen's book is not really that much about the dodo. Nor is it strictly a lament for our now muted world of absent bird-song. Quammen has achieved much more than a simple elegy for extinct species; his is not just mournfully warning us about the hazardous world we have created for our disappearing neighbors. Rather, Quammen has endeavored to explore a host of complex scientific theory, make his understandings communicable to the reader, and interrogate the extent to which our best scientific efforts mesh with the world around us. Weaving his travels and own scientific explorations together, Quammen brings the full-force of a scientific argument to the world, while simultaneously giving concrete example to the sometimes erudite work of the research community. As the work develops and deepens in nuance and explanatory power we better realize why Quammen's is so dedicated to his pursuit. This is a tale that grows in the telling.
The Song of the Dodo takes the transformation of our world and concomitant effects on biodiversity as an alarming, and complex problem desperately in need of explanation. To better illuminate the disappearance of (mostly island) species the world over, David Quammen travels the extent of the globe to speak with researchers and locals. Throughout, his motivating question examines why certain species become extinct. While it would be a noteworthy addition to the scientific literature if he could simply provide a lucid answer to such a difficult question, Quammen has achieved something much more profound: along the way we also learn why we ought to care about such disappearances. Part natural history, part travelogue, part historical scientific review, The Song of the Dodo is a triumph for taking the question of extinction and ponderously allowing a plethora of perspectives to interweave. The result is an emergent understanding, transcendent of aggregate evidence. It is as though Quammen has concretized his subject into a physical entity that we can circle and investigate from a host of angles and insights. What appears to begin as another lament for the destruction of the world, a two-dimensional abstraction of a global problem, gains force and momentum throughout the study. There is much to mull and ponder in the work, not least of all the transformation of Quammen's, and our own, thinking about how our own place in the world, more and more, comes at the exclusion of other species. It is not simply that the song of the dodo has been forever cast beyond the ken of human knowledge; rather, it is the silent cacophony of voices that have already joined it, and the untold numbers that will be added to the chorus in years to come.
