Burdick, Alan 1965–

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Burdick, Alan 1965–

PERSONAL: Born 1965, in Syracuse, NY; married. Education: Stanford University, B.A., 1988.

ADDRESSES: Home—New York, NY. Agent—c/o Author Mail, Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 19 Union Square W., New York, NY 10003. E-mail—[email protected].

CAREER: Writer and editor. Science Bulletins, American Museum of Natural History, New York, NY, former editorial producer and senior writer; New York Times Magazine, former story editor; Sciences magazine, former senior editor; Discover magazine, current senior editor.

AWARDS, HONORS: Nonfiction grants, Sloan Foundation, and New York Foundation for the Arts; Olive Branch Award (co-recipient), 1992; AAAS Westinghouse Prize, 1995, for magazine feature writing; residencies at MacDowell Colony, Yaddo, and Virginia Center for Creative Arts.

WRITINGS:

Out of Eden: An Odyssey of Ecological Invasion, Farrar, Straus & Giroux (New York, NY), 2005.

Contributor to periodicals, including Gentleman's Quarterly, New York Times Magazine, Harper's, Natural History, and Discover. Contributor to anthology Best American Science and Nature Writing, 2003.

SIDELIGHTS: Alan Burdick's debut title, Out of Eden: An Odyssey of Ecological Invasion, was ten years in the writing. Part travelogue, part nature writing, and part personal narrative, the work details the explosive spread of invasive species throughout the world, as well as the work of the scientists who study this phenomenon. The book took its author on a personal odyssey from Guam to Hawaii to California and back to his hometown of New York City, where he had been collecting clippings on such species for many years. A freelance writer and editor, Burdick expanded a 1994 article written for the New York Times Magazine into his first book.

Writing on his home page, he described the different levels of his work. "Foremost, it's about the conservation issues posed by alien species: how the increasing movement of species globally threatens the many, small pockets of biological diversity around the world, and diminishes the ecological uniqueness of any given place." Burdick further noted that Out of Eden is a "documentary about natural science: what ecologists are learning about how nature works by studying alien species, and the philosophical challenges involved in doing fieldwork," as well as a "travel story—an outward one, through a physical environment of weird, on-the-move creatures and changing landscapes, but also an inward one, through metaphysical, even spiritual questions about what we want from nature and our place on Earth." The result of the accidental and sometimes intentional importation and exportation of plant and animal species around the globe is a global sameness or homogenization in nature, according to Burdick.

Critics responded favorably to Burdick's mix of genres. Reviewing Out of Eden in Library Journal, Marianne Stowell Bracke commented that Burdick manages to makes this oft-written-about topic "fresh and compelling," especially with his profiles of scientists working in the field. A contributor for Publishers Weekly noted that Burdick's "vivid descriptions add the pleasure of travelogue to the intellectual satisfactions of science," while a critic for Kirkus Reviews dubbed the book "a silkily written excursion into the evolution of ecosystems and the possible threats to biodiversity from newcomers." Writing in the Washington Post Book World, Adrian Higgins praised the book's "dispassionate tone and broad, ultimately sanguine perspective."

Richard Coniff, writing in the New York Times Book Review, questioned Burdick's ultimate sanguinity—that nature is strong enough to adapt—in the face of some of his own evidence of the negative effects caused by such invasive species. Coniff noted: "Maybe Burdick is simply trying to avoid the hazards of environmental alarmism, but surely this goes too far. It doesn't square with the evidence he has diligently accumulated." For nature writer Bill McKibben, reviewing Out of Eden in the Boston Globe, Burdick's narrative is "one of the most comprehensive and readable accounts of the phenomenon." McKibben concluded: "For people trying to figure out how our species fits, or doesn't, into the natural order, there is no more interesting subject than the blending of the native and the exotic. And no more interesting an introduction than this fine book."