Falcon

The falcon is the fastest animal alive. It commands attention not only because its speed, power, beauty, and ferocity have fascinated people for millennia, but because of the radiance it has brought to human culture. This book, the breakout work of British writer and naturalist Helen Macdonald, combines the history of science with cultural history to explore, in a new and exhilarating way, the practical and symbolic significance of the falcon in human culture. The book begins with the falcon's natural history, covering its anatomy, physiology, hunting strategies, and flight mechanics; it then turns to the falcon's image in myth, religion, and heraldry, tracing how the ancient sport of falconry spread from courts and grasslands into the modern world and how the bird has been repeatedly enlisted in medieval manuscripts, diplomatic intrigue, secret military plans, and popular culture. It also covers the conservation history of endangered falcons and the plight of urban falcons: humans have always watched nature through "cultural spectacles," projecting themselves onto animals, yet falcons were not invented to bear symbols—they live, breed, fly, hunt, and breathe. First published in 2006, the book appeared in an expanded new edition in 2016; this Chinese edition is translated from the new edition and includes the author's new introduction and more than one hundred images. The project grew out of the author's research at the falconry archives of the World Center for Birds of Prey in Idaho while pursuing a PhD in the history of science at Cambridge: the anecdotes and stories that would not fit into a dissertation finally found a home in this book. In the same vein as her later celebrated work H Is for Hawk, this book is ultimately about how humans use nature as a mirror, how we face animals, and how we face ourselves.