THE BOOK
OF FLACO
THE WORLD’S MOST FAMOUS BIRD
See the cover reveal in People Magazine
“America’s best known owl is getting his own book” Kirkus Reviews
COMING IN FEBRUARY 2025
ABOUT THE BOOK
Between the night in February 2023, when he stepped through the hole that vandals had cut in his cage, and his death the following February, Flaco, the much-loved Eurasian eagle-owl, made Central Park and the surrounding city his home. During that year Flaco was the protagonist of a story with a moral, and even a basic narrative arc, that is still uncertain and varied, dependent very much on who you talk to or what posts you read. The poor owl carried so much symbolic weight that it was a miracle he could fly at all.
For many, Flaco represented freedom, life beyond a cage; for others, he was an immigrant, trying to make it in a foreign city; and for others still, he was a non-native who posed a threat to native birds. Flaco even managed to become part of our never-resting culture wars, with the New York Post heaping scorn on the anthropomorphizing softies who followed him, bemoaning “another example of progressivism gone awry.
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ABOUT DAVID GESSNER
David Gessner is the author of fourteen books that blend a love of nature, humor, memoir, and environmentalism, including the New York Times bestselling, All the Wild That Remains, Return of the Osprey, Sick of Nature and Leave It As It Is: A Journey Through Theodore Roosevelt’s American Wilderness.
THE BIRDMAN BLOG
Follow David on his adventures.
“For nature-writing enthusiasts, Gessner needs no introduction. His books and essays have in many ways redefined what it means to write about the natural world, coaxing the genre from a staid, sometimes wonky practice to one that is lively and often raucous.”
WASHINGTON POST