Tinkering With Eden

When Europeans arrived in North America they saw, on the one hand, a paradise, and on the other, a place that needed some work. Far from home and seeking to recreate the landscapes they'd left behind, or determined to improve on what they found, they introduced to their new terrain an amazing array of exotics - plants and animals not native to this continent.
Take the countless pigeons that flutter around our nation's cities in dirty masses. We can blame their ubiquitous presence on seventeenth-century explorers from France, where the birds were treasured as a sign of nobility. Or take the flocks of starlings that descend on fields of grain and pick them clean. In 1890, Shakespeare enthusiast Eugene Schieffelin decided to introduce every bird in Shakespeare's works to New York City's Central Park, including starlings. Some two hundred million now fly throughout North America, aggressively driving out native birds from coast to coast.
Kim Todd brings us these tales and others, portraying their humor, their science, and their hard lessons in brilliant, lyrical prose. More than 4000 exotic birds, insects, fish, mammals, and other creatures live in the United States, sometimes slipping in unnoticed, sometimes causing ecological catastrophe. This book, detailing some of their stories, will entertain, enlighten, and change the way we think about nature.

Kim Todd won the PEN/Jerard Award for this book while it was a work in progress. Now residing in San Francisco, she holds a B.A. from Yale University and an M.F.A. and an M.S. from the University of Montana The illustrator, Claire Emery, lives in Missoula, Montana