Endorsement: I just finished reading David Quammen's '
Monster of God: The Man-Eating Predator in the Jungles of History and the Mind,' and I absolutely loved it. Quammen is, in my mind, the best nature writer working today, maybe even the best natural-science writer, or science writer in general. His essay collections are great, but in book-length work he really shines. If you haven't read his '
Song of the Dodo,' I'd strongly encourage reading that one too. Quammen is the jam.