Part treatise, part lore, part catharsis, it reveals a love of snakes that Greene has nurtured since the age of five. In wonderfully evocative prose he deals with everything from snake behavior and anatomy to snake evolution and human interactions with snakes. He even contemplates the question of why we seem to have an innate fear of these slithering squamates. The book's reception has been overwhelmingly positive. I don't think so.
Life is short, but snakes are long.
Part of the credit is due his two colleagues, Michael and Patricia Fogden, veteran nature photographers who captured beautiful images of snakes in their natural habitats in 18 countries on six continents. Michael Fogden, a PhD biologist, was careful to photograph each snake not only on the correct vegetation, but eating the precise prey species it prefers. The experience was more than Greene hoped for when he decided to write a book after years contemplating the idea-an idea he hatched not long after coming to Berkeley in 1978. Among the feelings to be worked out, too, were those from previous jobs as an ambulance driver and an Army medic, where he daily confronted death. Just how to work things out was the question.