Divorce Among the Gulls: An Uncommon Look at Human Nature

The idea that there is some common cause in the workings of the human and animal mind is often ridiculed and dismissed as anthropomorphism. But, asks William Jordan, what if the intellectual establishment has it backwards? What if, instead of attributing human motives to animals, we paid more attention to the animal motives in humans? Divorce Among the Gulls is a startling exploration of this notion.

Jordan combines a storyteller's imagination and wit with a scientist's uncompromising attention to fact. Whether in a meditation on the extraordinary lives of insects beneath a canopy of alfalfa or in an explanation of the battle between male and female seagulls over which will incubate their eggs, Jordan eagerly throws open the door to his topsy-turvy view of the universe. Throughout, he evokes a sense of the fundamental kinship that yokes us all, human and animal, to the natural world. Divorce Among the Gulls is a thought-provoking and gracefully written essay.