Davis will explore how one bird’s wondrous journey provides inspiration today
Courtesy photo.
SUMMARY
- UCSB Arts & Lectures, Santa Barbara Museum of Natural History and Santa Barbara Audubon Society present Jack E. Davis, The Bald Eagle: The Improbable Journey of America’s Bird on Thursday, Nov. 3 at the Museum of Natural History’s Fleischmann Auditorium.
- Thursday Nov. 3 | 7:30 p.m.| Fleischmann Auditorium
- The Pulitzer Prize-winning author will discuss his new book, The Bald Eagle, a work that reconsiders the cultural history of America’s national bird
- Davis will demonstrate how one bird’s wondrous journey provides inspiration today, as we grapple with environmental peril on a larger scale
- Books will be available for purchase and signing, courtesy of Chaucer’s
- Please note: Fleischmann Auditorium is located at the Santa Barbara Museum of Natural History
- Free (registration recommended)
- Registration & Info: www.ArtsAndLectures.UCSB.edu, (805) 893-3535
“Combining natural, political, and cultural histories, Davis offers a wealth of surprising information and demolishes popular misconceptions… This account soars.” – Publisher’s Weekly
SANTA BARBARA — UCSB Arts & Lectures (A&L) presents Jack E. Davis, the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Gulf and now the author of The Bald Eagle: The Improbable Journey of America’s Bird, on Thursday, November 3 at 7:30 p.m. at Fleischmann Auditorium, Santa Barbara Museum of Natural History. Davis’s The Bald Eagle is a sweeping work of cultural and natural history that asks us to reconsider the story of America through the lens of our relationship to the natural world. Using spectacular stories of founding fathers, rapacious hunters, heroic bird rescuers and the lives of bald eagles themselves, Davis demonstrates how one bird’s wondrous journey provides inspiration today, as we grapple with environmental peril on a larger scale.
Jack E. Davis is co-presented with Santa Barbara Museum of Natural History and Santa Barbara Audubon Society.
ABOUT JACK E. DAVIS
Jack E. Davis is a professor of history and the Rothman Family Chair in the Humanities at University of Florida, specializing in environmental history and sustainability studies. When The Gulf, his history of the Gulf of Mexico, was published in March 2017, it was met with resounding praise. Hailed as a “nonfiction epic” (Dallas Morning News) and a “cri de coeur about the Gulf’s environmental ruin” (The New York Times), The Gulf went on to win the Pulitzer Prize for history. In April 2019, Davis was the recipient of an Andrew Carnegie Corporation fellowship, which helped support the writing of The Bald Eagle. He is currently writing a book on the history of environmental successes.
Published as we welcome a new population of eaglets in nesting season, The Bald Eagle does more than tell the story of the fate of a particular species. In resurrecting the voices of environmental prophets who warned against DDT; the efforts of a remarkable cast of bird advocates and rescuers who – state by state, nest by nest – climbed trees, rescued eggs and reintroduced fledges into the wild; and finally, charting the ecological redemption born from bipartisan legislation, Davis reveals the glimmer of a potential path forward as we grapple with environmental peril on a larger scale. The Bald Eagle is, too, Davis notes, a tale of American values and while patriotism and environmentalism may seem at odds today, “in the American historical context they are complementary at their core.”
As Davis reveals, no other animal in American history, certainly no avian one, has been the simultaneous object of such adoration and cruelty as the bald eagle – first beloved and hailed as an emblem of the rarefied natural environment of North America, then hated, and, finally, revered and protected. For centuries, Americans have celebrated the bald eagle as majestic and noble, yet savaged the living bird behind the national symbol as a malicious predator of livestock and, falsely, even a snatcher of babies. Taking us from before the nation’s founding, when Indigenous peoples lived peacefully beside the eagle, through two nearly inconceivable resurgences in the 20th century when it was – not once, but twice – nearly brought to extinction by hunting and DDT, Davis recounts a panoramic history of the bird and the icon, unearthing nothing less than the story of the nation and its tenuous relationship to the environment through nearly five centuries.
About UCSB Arts & Lectures
Founded in 1959, UCSB Arts & Lectures (A&L) is the largest and most influential arts and lectures organization between Los Angeles and San Francisco. A&L annually presents more than a hundred public events, from critically acclaimed concerts and dance performances by world-renowned artists to talks by groundbreaking authors and film series at UCSB and Santa Barbara-area venues. With a mission to “educate, entertain and inspire,” A&L also oversees an outreach program that brings visiting artists and speakers into local classrooms and other venues for master classes, open rehearsals, discussions and more, serving K-12 students, college students and the general public.
Jack E. Davis is presented by UCSB Arts & Lectures, Santa Barbara Museum of Natural History and Santa Barbara Audubon Society. Tickets are free (registration recommended).
Please note: Fleischmann Auditorium is located at the Santa Barbara Museum of Natural History.
For more information, call UCSB Arts & Lectures at (805) 893-3535 or visitt www.ArtsAndLectures.UCSB.edu.
UCSB Arts & Lectures gratefully acknowledges our Community Partners the Natalie Orfalea Foundation & Lou Buglioli for their generous support of the 2022-2023 season.