<DIV><DIV><DIV><DIV>Arriving in the New World, Europeans were awestruck by a continent awash with birds. Today tens of millions of Americans birders have made a once eccentric hobby into something so mainstream it's (almost) cool. <P></P>Scott Weidensaul traces the colorful evolution of American birding: from the frontier ornithologists who collected eggs between border skirmishes to the society matrons who organized the first effective conservation movement; from the luminaries with checkered pasts, such as convicted blackmailer Alexander Wilson and the endlessly self-mythologizing John James Audubon, to the awkward schoolteacher Roger Tory Peterson, whose <I>A Field Guide to the Birds</I> prompted the explosive growth of modern birding. Spirited and compulsively readable, <I>Of a Feather </I>celebrates the passions and achievements of birders throughout Americcan history. </DIV> </P></DIV></DIV></DIV>