Description
When birdwatching in New York’s most famous park one morning in May 2020, Christian Cooper was engaged in the ritual that had been a part of his life since he was ten years old. But when a routine encounter with a dog walker devolved into a tense racial confrontation, Cooper’s video of the incident would spark a firestorm at a moment when America’s conscience on race was awakening.
In Better Living Through Birding, Cooper tells the story of his extraordinary life leading up to the now-infamous incident in Central Park and shows how a life spent looking up at the birds prepared him, in the most uncanny of ways, to be a gay, Black man in America today. From sharpened senses that work just as well at a protest as in a park to what a bird like the Common Grackle can teach us about self-acceptance, Better Living Through Birding exults in the pleasures of a life lived in pursuit of the natural world and invites you to discover them yourself.
