Thursday, August 27, 2009

What is Richard Mahler reading?

The current featured contributor to Writers Read: Richard Mahler, author of The Jaguar's Shadow: Searching for a Mythic Cat and other books on travel, self-transformation, nature, social trends, and cooking, as well as thousands of articles to hundreds of websites, radio programs, and print publications, including the Los Angeles Times and Chicago Tribune.

His entry begins:
I'm a big fan of Malcolm Gladwell and am half-way through his Outliers: The Story of Success (Little, Brown & Co., 2008). Gladwell has a pitch-perfect ear for the telling anecdote and is not afraid to reveal himself through interaction with his interview subjects. I identify with him because he asks questions and confesses ignorance in the same way most of us would. More importantly, I find his topics simply fascinating. They are rich, unmined veins of human behavior and psychology: how little things in life add up to big differences, the power of subliminal thinking, and what contributes to a person excelling at what he or she does. I suppose writers have discussed these sorts of things before, in academic journals and specialized books, but Gladwell has a wonderful way of keeping the conversation as lively as a good dinner party while at the same time introducing the little-known facts and up-to-the-deadline research results that are the hallmark of a....[read on]
Visit Richard Mahler's website.

Among the praise for Mahler's The Jaguar's Shadow:
“We must decide whether we have room in our lives for life itself. Richard Mahler's obsession with jaguars will convince anyone that we must have them out in the night of our wilder dreams. We need jaguars far more than they need us. They may be heavy, but they're our secretive spotted brothers.”
—Charles Bowden, author of Exodus/Éxodo

“Mahler has provided the most comprehensive portrait yet of one of the most elusive felines in the world.”
—Kevin Hansen, author of Bobcat: Master of Survival
Writers Read: Richard Mahler.

--Marshal Zeringue