This was fantastic! Some of what's in here is familiar to me, of course, as it is to anyone who either studied biology and/or lives on an island where endangered species and what to do with them is a constant underlying national conversation. Much of the book, though, covered debates that I'd never given much attention to, or experiments that I'd never heard of. Crucially, it does so in plain language - often leavened with humour - and it's just an excellent overall introduction to biogeography, one that can be appreciated by the general public.

I do admit to some national bias, however. I kept expecting New Zealand to come up - and it did, but only in throwaway examples. Quammen never looks in any detail at what's happening here as he does in Hawaii or Tasmania or Madagascar, for instance, but then again that alternate focus exposes me to examples that I would never otherwise have considered. The close look at the conservation programme that saved the desperately endangered Mauritius kestrel, for instance, seems a very close analogue to that focused on the Chatham Island black robin, which has always been my go-to example for a last-ditch, desperate measure breeding programme. The robin is over here, of course, whereas I wouldn't recognise a Mauritius kestrel if one fell on me, but I think that's the beauty of a book like this: readers will be able to apply what they read about, even if it's over the other side of the world, to the species in their own local or regional environments.

Hopefully that will make them more interested in, and supportive of, the conservation programmes around them.