Campbell, David G.

PERSONAL:

Education: Johns Hopkins University, Ph.D., 1984.

ADDRESSES:

Office—Department of Biology, Grinnell College, 1116 8th Ave, Grinnell, IA 50112-1690. E-mail—campbell@grinnell.edu.

CAREER:

Grinnell College, Grinnell, IA, Henry R. Luce Professor of Nations and the Global Environment, 1991—. Adjunct professor, Nanjing University, Nanjing, China. Former director, Bahamas National Trust for the Conservation of Wildlife; former consultant, International Union for the Conservation of Nature, Switzerland. Former member of scientific staff, New York Botanical Garden; member of sixth Brazilian expedition to Antarctica, 1987.

AWARDS, HONORS:

New York Times Book Review notable book citation, 1993, Houghton Mifflin Literary Fellowship Award, and Burroughs Medal, all for The Crystal Desert. Also recipient of Guggenheim Fellowship, Burroughs Medal, PEN Martha Albrand Award for Nonfiction, and Lannan Award for Nonfiction, 2005.

WRITINGS:

The Ephemeral Islands: A Natural History of the Bahamas, Macmillan (London, England), 1978.

(Editor, with H. David Hammond) Floristic Inventory of Tropical Countries: The Status of Plant Systematics, Collections, and Vegetation, Plus Recommendations for the Future, New York Botanical Garden (Bronx, NY), 1989.

The Crystal Desert: Summers in Antarctica, Houghton Mifflin (Boston, MA), 1992.

Islands in Space and Time, Houghton Mifflin (Boston, MA), 1996.

A Land of Ghosts: The Braided Lives of People and the Forest in Far Western Amazonia, Houghton Mifflin (Boston, MA), 2005.

SIDELIGHTS:

Biologist David G. Campbell's credentials literally span the entire globe. According to his Web page at Grinnell College in Iowa, where he teaches, Campbell has worked in biospheres as different as tropical America, tropical China, and the frozen Antarctic. He "spent eight years in the field in the Brazilian Amazon conducting research on the biogeography of trees," his Web page biography stated. "In 1987 Campbell joined the sixth Brazilian expedition to Antarctica," where he studied parasites that lived on the local fauna. He also tells the story of his sojourns in each of these places in his popular works of nonfiction, ranging from The Crystal Desert: Summers in Antarctica to Islands in Space and Time to A Land of Ghosts: The Braided Lives of People and the Forest in Far Western Amazonia.

The Crystal Desert is Campbell's own vivid description of the time he spent as part of a research team working in the Antarctic. The book, said a Publishers Weekly critic, "brings the Antarctic to vivid, teeming life in this eloquent, comprehensive natural and social history of the ice-clad continent." It tells the story, not only of Campbell's own work documenting and analyzing the different kinds of animals and birds that inhabit the southern continent and its oceans, but also of the influence that humans have had on the environment—including the nineteenth- and twentieth-century whaling and sealing expeditions that depleted the area of its megafauna. The Crystal Desert earned Campbell both a New York Times Book Review notable book citation, a Houghton Mifflin Literary Fellowship Award, and the Burroughs Medal.

In Islands in Space and Time, Campbell analyzes the issues faced by ten different wilderness areas scattered around the globe. Each of the ten areas is protected by the Nature Conservancy, but nonetheless is threatened by advancements in the modern world, including invasive species and human encroachment. From the Florida Keys and the Everglades to an isolated ranch in Montana, Campbell moves to the peaks of the Ecuadorian Andes to the Amazonian jungles of Brazil and Paraguay and the islands of Molokai in Hawaii and Palau in the South Pacific. The author's "understanding of ecosystems is deep," declared a Publishers Weekly contributor, "and conveyed clearly as he describes the geological and biological history of these preserves." "This is a bittersweet book full of beauty and disappointment," wrote Carl Reidel in American Forests, "where the reader discovers remarkable places, only to learn of their imminent loss."

A Land of Ghosts tells the story of the destruction of the Amazonian rain forest from Campbell's point of view. "It is a beautifully written elegy for the Amazonian forest and its peoples," Toby Green wrote in the London Independent. "Campbell is a naturalist who has made repeated visits to the Amazon basin; his masterful achievement is to distill a lifetime's experience, thought and feeling into 214 pages where every word is delivered with unerring grace." "His knowledge of insects, birds, plants, reptiles and furry creatures lets him relate dramas that a less skilled observer wouldn't even know were unfolding," declared New York Times Book Review contributor Elizabeth Royce. "And there is plenty of sex-and-death drama on this extended journey. Campbell goes beyond observation to explain how competition and cooperation shaped the forest and its creatures, which evolved together over millenniums, and what forces maintain, or interrupt, the status quo. Measuring trees seems silly to some colonists the scientist encounters, but slowly Campbell's team is transmuting the forest into numbers, noticing patterns and processes that couldn't be discerned without them." "Interwoven with his account of that journey," Roger Harris stated in the American Scientist, "are threads of the larger Amazon story—the river's scientific and historical setting, engaging anecdotes recounted by his unlikely companions,… and descriptions of Campbell's encounters with tropical flora and fauna." Campbell's "love for the region and his concern about its future are compelling," Stephanie Joy Smith said in the Wilson Quarterly. "He doesn't propose a plan for saving the rainforest, but he offers a vivid account of why it's worth saving." A Land of Ghosts is, Green concluded, "an instant classic."

Campbell told CA: "The discipline of wordsmithing has taught me how to observe keenly, use all my senses, and pay careful attention to the details—that each moment of life can be an epiphany.

"When I was a child, I went through phases of immersing myself in a particular writer (of prose, poetry, or both) for months on end, reading everything I could find by that person, and memorizing passages. I steeped myself in their way of seeing and their word-sense, then, like an unfaithful lover, I moved on to another. The most influential writers of my youth were John Steinbeck, Charles Darwin, T.S. Eliot and, of course, William Shakespeare.

"My writing process is fitful, inconstant, temperamental, nocturnal … and always an imperative. When I feel creative I have no choice but to write.

"The most surprising thing I have learned as a writer is that transmuting the daily experience of living into weightless words is an alchemy as full of magic as turning lead into gold (or should I say gold into gold?). After all, written language is only a few thousand years old; it's a brand new thing on this planet, an evolutionary quantum leap.

"I hope that my books will get the reader out of the chair and into the woods: to observe, listen, touch, sniff and taste. Writing and reading are splendid things, but both are poor substitutes for living well."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

American Biology Teacher, May, 2006, Sarah Durfee, review of A Land of Ghosts: The Braided Lives of People and the Forest in Far Western Amazonia, p. 306.

American Forests, autumn, 1997, Carl Reidel, review of Islands in Space and Time, p. 33.

American Scientist, July 1, 2005, Roger Harris, review of Land of Ghosts, p. 378.

Arctic, September, 1994, review of The Crystal Desert: Summers in Antarctica, p. 313.

Audubon, March 1, 1993, Nancy Bray Cardozo, review of The Crystal Desert, p. 123.

Booklist, November 1, 1992, Donna Seaman, review of The Crystal Desert, p. 474.

Choice: Current Reviews for Academic Libraries, May, 1993, J.D. Ives, review of The Crystal Desert, p. 1488.

Christian Science Monitor, January 8, 1993, Mary Warner Marien, review of The Crystal Desert, p. 13.

Independent (London, England), December 23, 2004, Toby Green, "Elegy for the Amazon Is an Instant Classic."

Library Journal, November 1, 1992, Jean E. Crampon, review of The Crystal Desert, p. 111; March 1, 1993, review of The Crystal Desert, p. 44; December, 1996, Sandra Knowles, review of Islands in Space and Time, p. 137.

Nature, February 13, 1997, review of Islands in Space and Time, p. 591.

New Yorker, December 28, 1992, review of The Crystal Desert, p. 203.

New York Times, December 17, 1992, Christopher Lehmann-Haupt, review of The Crystal Desert, p. 17.

New York Times Book Review, February 28, 1993, Edna O'Brien, review of The Crystal Desert, p. 7; June 6, 1993, review of The Crystal Desert, p. 43; December 5, 1993, review of The Crystal Desert, p. 76; May 8, 1994, review of The Crystal Desert, p. 24; June 5, 1994, review of The Crystal Desert, p. 58; April 10, 2005, Elizabeth Royte, "Across the River and into the Trees," p. 18.

Publishers Weekly, October 26, 1992, review of The Crystal Desert, p. 48; December 6, 1993, review of The Crystal Desert, p. 71; November 11, 1996, review of Islands in Space and Time, p. 67.

Quarterly Review of Biology, September, 1994, Joel W. Hedgpeth, review of The Crystal Desert, p. 390.

Reference & Research Book News, November, 1997, review of Islands in Space and Time, p. 164.

SciTech Book News, May, 1993, review of The Crystal Desert, p. 16.

Sea Frontiers, January 1, 1981, review of The Ephemeral Islands: A Natural History of the Bahamas, p. 56.

Times Higher Education Supplement, September 2, 2005, "A Peek under the Canopy," p. 23.

Times Literary Supplement, February 26, 1993, Robert Carver, review of The Crystal Desert, p. 27.

Wilson Library Bulletin, April, 1995, review of The Crystal Desert, p. 47.

Wilson Quarterly, summer, 2005, Stephanie Joy Smith, review of Land of Ghosts.

ONLINE

Grinnell College Web site,http://web.grinnell.edu/ (February 17, 2008), "David G. Campbell."

Lannan Foundation Web site,http://www.lannan.org/ (February 17, 2008), author profile.