Külföldi torrent oldalak Bibliotik | BiB R.i.p. Farley Mowat (1921-2014)

R.I.P. Farley Mowat (1921-2014)
Posted 1 day, 22 hours ago Few authors have defended nature and wildlife as tirelessly as Farley Mowat, who died at his home in Ontario on May 6 at the age of 92. Never Cry Wolf, published in 1963 and based on his experiences in the Canadian Far North, ranks with Rachel Carson's Silent Spring as a seminal environmental classic, one that proved instrumental in changing popular attitudes about wolves and ultimately led to their reintroduction into protected wilderness areas. In Sea of Slaughter, published in 1984, he so vehemently denounced the destruction of animal life in the North Atlantic that he was judged a "known radical" by the Reagan administration and barred from entering the United States. To celebrate Mowat's passionate life and extensive body of work, all his ebooks (excluding audiobooks) will be freeleech for the next 48 hours.

Mowat came to nature writing early. As a teenager in Saskatchewan in the 1930s he wrote a column about birds for the Saskatoon newspaper and privately published his own newsletter, "Nature Lore." As an army officer during the Second World War he saw combat action in the invasion of Sicily and went behind enemy lines in the Netherlands as an intelligence agent charged with negotiating food drops for the starving populace—an unofficial accommodation with the German authorities that saved thousands of Dutch lives. Following the war he enrolled at the University of Toronto and signed up for a field trip to the Arctic that inspired his first book, People of the Deer. Mowat's outrage at the living conditions of the indigenous Inuit forced Canadians to acknowledge a history of genocide that reduced a tribe of 7,000 to only 40 survivors and made him a popular, controversial figure. The 39 books that followed sold more than 17 million copies and were translated into 52 languages.

Mowat famously claimed that he "never let the facts get in the way of the truth," and much of his nonfiction is as fast-paced and gripping as his novels. The debate about whether books like Never Cry Wolf are "possibly fictionalized" will never be resolved, but no one can dispute their narrative power and impact upon society. Most of Mowat's body of work is available here on Bibliotik. It covers ground that ranges from the Siberian tundra to equatorial Africa, and whether the topic is owls or gorillas or the fishing villages of Newfoundland, you would be hard-pressed to find a more congenial guide. Discuss this post here!

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