Jennie Erin Smith Stolen World: A Tale of Reptiles, Smugglers, and Skulduggery download free
Jennie Erin Smith Stolen World: A Tale of Reptiles, Smugglers, and Skulduggery
Crown | English | 2011 | ISBN: 0307381471 | 336 pages | EPUB/MOBI | 4.6 MB / 5.5 MB
Crown | English | 2011 | ISBN: 0307381471 | 336 pages | EPUB/MOBI | 4.6 MB / 5.5 MB
Vile, venomous and best kept under lock and key and thats just the people in this gripping book. Jennie Erin Smith spent a decade investigating the strange world of reptile collectors and dealers who specialise in rare species. I couldnt put this book down, partly because its a ripping yarn of wildlife cops versus reptile robbers, but also because I was mesmerised by the horror of it all. New Scientist
In this very disturbing and very entertaining chronicle of reptile smugglers, the collectors and zoo keepers who trade with them, and the federal agents who try to catch them, the humans are as devious, dangerous, and creepily charming as the cold-blooded creatures they lust after. Science reporter Smith bases her book on extensive original interviews with two smugglers: Henry Molt Jr. is a reptile dealer who, in the 1960s, unable to get a job with a zoo, began a lifelong career of reptile collecting involving restless international travel, partner-stiffing, and jail time, with an undaunted enthusiasm thats survived into his 60s: The reptile business is a disease, he said, and you cant retire from a disease. Equally outrageous is the volatile, knife-wielding Tommy Crutchfield, who expanded his childhood alligator-and-snake business into a million-dollar empire of reptile hunting and dealing. Even the curators of the Bronx and San Diego zoos let their obsession with the animals lure them into deals in order to obtain illegally imported rare breeds. Smiths affection for these unsavory people gives the book an intriguing moral ambiguity (which might make some environmentalists cringe), but the subcultures brazen shenanigans make for a convoluted, fascinating tale.
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