H Is for Hawk

Helen Macdonald

Mar 2015 · Grove/Atlantic, Inc.

About this ebook

New York Times Bestseller: This account of adopting and raising a vicious bird of prey while grieving a father’s death is “a soaring wonder of a book” (The Boston Globe).

One of the New York Times Book Review’s 10 Best Books of the Year

One of Slate’s 50 Best Nonfiction Books of the Last 25 Years

Time’s #1 Nonfiction Book of the Year

An instant classic and award-winning sensation, Helen Macdonald’s story of adopting and raising one of nature’s most vicious predators has soared into the hearts of millions of readers worldwide. Fierce and feral, her goshawk Mabel’s temperament mirrors Helen’s own state of grief after her father’s death, and together raptor and human “discover the pain and beauty of being alive” (People). H Is for Hawk is a genre-defying debut from a unique and transcendent voice.

“Her prose glows and burns.” —The Wall Street Journal

“An elegantly written amalgam of nature writing, personal memoir, literary portrait, and an examination of bereavement.” —The Washington Post

“Breathtaking . . . Macdonald renders an indelible impression of a raptor’s fierce essence—and her own—with words that mimic feathers, so impossibly pretty we don’t notice their astonishing engineering.” —The New York Times Book Review

Named a Best Book of the Year by NPR, O, The Oprah Magazine, Vogue, Vanity Fair, Washington Post, Boston Globe, Chicago Tribune, Seattle Times, San Francisco Chronicle, Miami Herald, St. Louis Post Dispatch, Minneapolis Star Tribune, Library Journal, Publishers Weekly, Kirkus Reviews, Slate, Shelf Awareness, Book Riot

Ratings and reviews

Very pleasant reading. Engaging and entertaining. Wish there had been more on grieving, but enjoyed it all the same.

I really wanted to like this but it took me months to get through. so boring.

I could relate, chapters keep you interested. Humor mix with page turner. I loved it. Thanks.

About the author

HELEN MACDONALD is a writer, poet, illustrator and naturalist, and an affiliated research scholar at the Department of History and Philosophy of Science at the University of Cambridge. She is the author of the bestselling H Is for Hawk, as well as a cultural history of falcons, titled Falcon, and three collections of poetry, including Shaler's Fish. Macdonald was a Research Fellow at Jesus College, Cambridge, has worked as a professional falconer, and has assisted with the management of raptor research and conservation projects across Eurasia. She now writes for the New York Times Magazine. Twitter: @HelenJMacdonald