IMPERIAL DREAMS

摘要

I'm A Sucker For Animalquests. Give me a good story about following a peregrine to South America, or tracking a snow leopard into the Himalayas, and I'll gobble it up. The first line of Tim Gallagher's Imperial Dreams did nothing to dampen my enthusiasm, describing the imperial woodpecker as a giant bird with vivid black-and-white coloring "whose pounding drumbeat echoed through the forests as it bored into passive pines, hammering on them powerfully for weeks until they groaned, shuddered, and finally toppled with an impact that shook the ground." Yes! I was ready to go.