#55 in Popular science
Fuzz
- 245
- Pages
- about 4.5 h
- Reading time
- NYT bestseller · 2 weeks on the list, peaked at #4
Affiliate link: buying through it supports BookRank at no extra cost to you.
Our view
Mary Roach makes the clash between people and wild animals funny and oddly instructive in “Fuzz”. Some readers come away thinking about conservation questions that had never occurred to them, even if they find it dry in stretches, and welcome the optimism of the ending. Roach travels with the specialists in such conflicts, from animal-attack investigators to bear managers, as far as the Indian Himalaya.
The view of the BookRank editors, written from readers’ ratings and comments. It does not affect the score or the book’s place in a ranking.
About the book
What's to be done about a jaywalking moose? A bear caught breaking and entering? A murderous tree? Three hundred years ago, animals that broke the law would be assigned legal representation and put on trial. These days, as New York Times best-selling author Mary Roach discovers, the answers are best found not in jurisprudence but in science: the curious science of human-wildlife conflict, a discipline at the crossroads of human behavior and wildlife biology. Roach tags along with animal-attack forensics investigators, human-elephant conflict specialists, bear managers, and "danger tree" faller blasters. Intrepid as ever, she travels from leopard-terrorized hamlets in the Indian Himalaya to St. Peter's Square in the early hours before the pope arrives for Easter Mass, when vandal gulls swoop in to destroy the elaborate floral display. She taste-tests rat bait, learns how to install a vulture effigy, and gets mugged by a macaque. Combining little-known forensic science and conservation genetics with a motley cast of laser scarecrows, langur impersonators, and trespassing squirrels, Roach reveals as much about humanity as about nature's lawbreakers. When it comes to "problem" wildlife, she finds, humans are more often the problem—and the solution. Fascinating, witty, and humane, Fuzz offers hope for compassionate coexistence in our ever-expanding human habitat.
Where the score comes from
The sources average 7.6 across 141 ratings — not yet many, so the reader vote carries 49% of the weight and the rest pulls toward the Popular science average of 8.3. That is how 7.9 comes out.
| Source | Average | Ratings | Weight |
|---|---|---|---|
| Hardcover | 7.6 | 141 | 100% |
Frequently asked
How long is Fuzz?
It has 245 pages — shorter than 75% of the ranked books in Popular science.
In this book
Themes this book shares with others — each leads to the best books on it.
If you liked this
Same shelf — Popular science — with scores between 7.9 and 8.6, closest to this book.
