Chasing Kangaroos

A Continent, a Scientist, and a Search for the World's Most Extraordinary Creature

The internationally acclaimed author of The Weather Makers crafts a love letter to his native land and one of its most unique inhabitants: the kangaroo.

Drawing on three decades of travel, research, and field work, Tim Flannery shows us how the destiny of the extraordinary kangaroo is inseparable from the environment that created it. Along the way he uses encounters with ancient aboriginal cultures, eccentric fossil hunters, farmers, scientists, kangaroo advocates, and kangaroo hunters, to explore how Australia’s deserts and rain forests have shaped human responses to the continent—and how kangaroos have evolved to handle the resulting challenges. Ultimately, Chasing Kangaroos is a captivating blend of memoir, travel, natural history, and evolutionary science—and further proof of Flannery’s “offhand interdisciplinary brilliance” (Entertainment Weekly).

“Absorbing, funny, and wonderfully learned.” —Bill Bryson, New York Times–bestselling author of A Walk in the Woods