The Snake Charmer
A Life and Death in Pursuit of Knowledge
-
- ¥1,600
-
- ¥1,600
発行者による作品情報
The true story of a brilliant herpetologist killed by a snake in the jungle of Burma is vividly recounted in this fascinating and harrowing biography.
In the fall of 2001, star herpetologist Dr. Joe Slowinski led a team of scientists into the jungles of Burma to find rare snakes. But the expedition was cut short by a bite from a many-banded krait, the deadliest serpent in Asia. Suddenly, Joe's life was in imminent peril. In one of the most remarkable wilderness rescue attempts of modern times, Joe's teammates kept him alive for thirty hours by mouth-to-mouth respiration, waiting for a rescue that never came.
A daredevil obsessed with venomous snakes since his youth, Joe was a study in contrasts—meticulous in his science yet reckless in his pursuit of knowledge. A brilliant biologist, he rose quickly to the top of his field, discovering a number of snake species in his brief yet exhilarating career.
Part science biography and part travel literature, The Snake Charmer presents a lively introduction to the strange and fascinating world of snake science while transporting readers from the Everglades to Peru to Burma, in search of rattlesnakes, boa constrictors, kraits, and cobras.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
James (The Music of the Spheres) tells the gritty and sad story of Joe Slowinski, a flamboyant and well-known herpetologist who died in Burma in 2001, aged 38, from the poisonous bite of a krait snake. Different snakes from the first black rat snake he encountered at age five to the cobras on which his professional success was built anchor different phases in Slowinski's life, as James paints a portrait of a man filled with ambition, intelligence, passion and recklessness. The account of the expedition into an unexplored region of northern Burma is chilling it "set a new standard of misery" for scientific expeditions. After Slowinski was bitten by the krait, he was kept alive for 30 hours, through his companions' heroic efforts, with mouth-to-mouth resuscitation. But the snake's potent neurotoxin did its work, and Slowinski died deep in the jungle. In the end, this book is both a tribute to Slowinski's spirit and scientific accomplishments, and a cautionary tale about the dangers of an overly passionate ambition. 8 pages of color and 8 pages of b&w photos.
