"Look Here, Sir, What a Curious Bird" by Paul Spencer Sochaczewski

"Look Here, Sir, What a Curious Bird" by Paul Spencer Sochaczewski

A Great Man and His Unheralded Assistant

For some 50 years, Paul Sochaczewski has been on the trail of famous naturalist Alfred Russel Wallace and his little-known assistant Ali.

The result of this quest is an imaginative enhanced biography of an illiterate 19th-century teenager from Borneo who helped Wallace become one of history's most successful explorers of the natural world.

This deliciously speculative book, filled with humor and touching scenes of imagined conversations, takes a hard look at slippery truth, and, perhaps most important, asks the question: Is there someone in your life who has quietly helped you, perhaps without adequate recognition, on your journey?

In this innovative approach to biography, you'll discover:

• New clues that expand our knowledge of Ali's background and career
• Why writing the history of a 19th-century teenage boy from Borneo is so challenging
• Details about how Ali collected some 5,000 of Wallace's 8,050 bird specimens
• Imagined conversations that explore emotions and perceptions of Wallace and Ali
• How each of us has an Ali who has helped us along the way

Who's your Ali? Perhaps this book might encourage to reach out to someone forgotten but who eased your path along your journey?

Sochaczewski, Paul Spencer: - Paul Spencer Sochaczewski is a Geneva-based writer and writing coach. While with WWF (World Wide Fund for Nature International), Paul created global campaigns to protect rainforests and biological diversity, and then developed the WWF Faith and Environment program. Paul has lived and worked in more than eighty countries, including two decades in Southeast Asia. He has written more than six hundred by-lined articles for The New York Times, The International Herald Tribune, Wall Street Journal, Travel and Leisure, CNN Traveller, Reader's Digest, and Geographical. In addition, he has written about the nature of Malaysia in Malaysia: Heart of Southeast Asia, served on the Editorial Advisory Board for the Indonesian Heritage Encyclopedia, and was project initiator for Tanah Air: Celebrating Indonesia's Biodiversity. And because this is a book of fantasy, Paul is a daring giant-wave surfer (four-time winner of the Quiksilver in Memory of Eddie Aikau on Oahu's North Shore), has summited K2 without supplemental oxygen, proven that orang pendek, which he dubbed snowmen of the jungle, live in the rainforests of Sumatra (he spent three weeks with a troupe of the elusive hominoids, whose existence had never been proven, recording their vocalizations and filming their daily activities), studied teleportation techniques with a Bhutanese Tantra master, and has won three Pulitzer Prizes for his incisive writing and commentary. He has never spoken publicly about his arm-wrestling victory over Arnold Schwarzenegger. George Clooney or Harrison Ford will star in a biopic of Paul's life, now in pre-production. www.sochaczewski.com

SKU	Unavailable
ISBN 13	9782940573417
ISBN 10	2940573417
Title	"Look Here, Sir, What a Curious Bird"
Author	Paul Spencer Sochaczewski
Condition	Unavailable
Binding Type	Paperback
Publisher	Explorer's Eye Press
Year published	2023-07-11
Number of pages	274
Cover note	Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary.