This book certainly had a lot of information about birds. It stressed the connections and similarities between birds and humans. Birds are sentinels, food, sources of guano, insect exterminators and many other things. The book explores their intelligence, methods of communication and family dynamics. Personally, I believe in the awesomeness of birds irregardless of their usefulness to us and I sort of wish people would stop experimenting on them. I also wish that the author would stop hunting and killing them and I find it difficult to reconcile that behavior with a professed love of birds. I regret that we will never again get to see a flock of passenger pigeons a mile wide and more than 300 miles long.

I received a free copy of this book from the publisher.

A very engaging comprehensive book about the science behind birds and how they live. I found it well researched and enjoyable use as a learning tool The . multitude of birds here are described in habit, nesting, travel and family. i enjoyed reading this fascinating book and highly recommend it for anyone interested in ornithology.

As a bird watcher, I was especially intrigued by this book and it did not disappoint. There is so much that we don't know about birds and I learned a lot in the book. I went out and bought a copy after having the chance to read this on Netgalley.

The Wonder of Birds: What They Tell Us about Ourselves, the World, and a Better Future by Jim Robbins is journey of love and fascination between mankind and birds. A journal where man has benefited by watching our feathered friends in different ways and how they have enriched our lives, how they have helped our planet, and have pleased our eyes and warmed our hearts. It is written so warmly, and tenderly, I can feel the love for the feathered creatures from far away and it warmed me...As a bird lover, nature lover, this is a treasure! For everyone, this book will delight and open their minds to our magical friends of a feather. The author takes us, hand and wing, on a journey through differences and changes that link us together. It is amazing how we are linked together in this amazing thing called life. Thank you NetGalley for letting me read this book.

Birds are fascinating and this book looks at them in so many different aspects. In almost every chapter, you'll learn things you didn't know before, meet wonderful researchers and birders, and really get insight into these lovely animals.

It's well-written and presents a great deal of research in a way that is great for the general reader. Unhappily, as is too often the case these days, the author's excellent work is marred by a somewhat preachy tone and by too much reliance on the same suite of trendy opinions and multi-culturalism (i.e. Western society bad, all native societies good, global warming, etc.) I think the book would have been stronger if he had found a better way to do this. In fact his gratuitous use of these opinions in the earlier chapters made his last few chapters, which rely almost exclusively on these ideas, almost unreadable. And that's a shame in an otherwise excellent book.

Goodreads Rating: 3.5 stars, rounded down to 3
NetGalley Rating: 3 stars

Although I've always loved birds, I've become a much more avid and aware bird watcher in the past year, so this book caught my eye when it promised to reveal how important birds are to our lives.

Each chapter focuses on a different species of bird/group of birds and discusses how the bird(s) unique features help out the environment and the human race, or highlights some of their amazing, still not understood feats of endurance. Geese that migrate high over Mt. Everest, bird murmur studies, bird guano, bee-eater's human-like family dramas, and birds/birdwatching as therapy are just some of the multitudes of stories highlighted in Robbins' book. The writing style is incredibly easy to read, the perfect blend of hard facts, interviews, and personal observations. Perfect summer-time reading as you can easily dip in and out of the book, reading a chapter or two here and there as it catches your fancy.

Many of these chapters piqued my interest, and made me more interested in many of the birds, or aspects of birds, that I read about. However, I still had to round down my rating of 3.5 stars because it falls into an information presentation style that I hate: The extremely amazed shock that birds are smart creatures who have personalities, can figure out problems, and are an extremely vital part of the ecosystem. More vital, and possibly even more smarter, than humans.

There's no doubt that many of the facts I learned were quite surprising to me--I found myself thinking "a bird can really do that?!" throughout the book. But I felt like there was an undertone of offense under this all, as if birds being this awesome is offending a fragile human superego. This is a bit of a nit picking issue, as the overall tone takes a positive-neutral pro-bird stance. However, the astonishment seemed past the excited, "whoa, birds are amazing!" to the offended, "how in the world can birds be better than us?"

I also found that, when Robbins discussed the importance and use of birds in indigenous cultures and beliefs, there seemed a disconnect to the importance or relevance of these stories, seeming to be included to meet a requirement rather than a true interest. Traditional stories that were used to complement the facts in some chapters seemed to be brushed aside as "silly" or insignificant--even though the epilogue encourages us to reconnect to nature and to that "oneness" with the earth that these ancient, indigenous cultures still retain.

Despite my irritation with some of the stylistic undertones, I would still recommend this book to any bird or nature lover. It's an excellent way to introduce someone to how wonderful birds can be.