Life List

November 10, 2008
In this biography of bird enthusiast Phoebe Snetsinger, former journalist Gentile wonders whether there is a “line between dedication and obsession, and when does obsession cross the line into pathology?” Married, with four children, Phoebe was a frustrated 1950s housewife who began experiencing a depression that “felt like she was inside a tomb.” Her introduction to bird-watching by “another shy, brainy housewife,” seeing a warbler through binoculars, was a revelation; it was as if she’d seen a “blinding white light.” With the help of a local birding club, Phoebe began her “life list” of birds and gradually began traveling farther afield in search of new sightings. Diagnosed in her late 40s with incurable cancer and less than a year to live, she threw herself into birding, traveling worldwide, ignoring injury and danger to work on her life list for another 18 years, until killed in a bus accident in Madagascar at the age of 68. Gentile’s ambivalence, celebrating Snetsinger’s “having lived so fully and with so much spirit” but noting that “she had lost the capacity to take into account her family, her health and her safety,” adds a reflectiveness that Phoebe herself may have avoided in life.

February 15, 2009
Lively biography of intrepid, world-traveling ornithologist and cancer survivor Phoebe Snetsinger.

In her first book, journalist Gentile lovingly reanimates Snetsinger's life (1931–99) using the renowned bird watcher's memoir (Birding on Borrowed Time, 2003), letters, notebooks, poetry and newsletter articles, as well as interviews with friends and family. The plucky, tomboyish daughter of advertising entrepreneur Leo Burnett, Snetsinger married a high-school friend who became an agriculture professor. By 1965, she was a bored housewife raising four children in rural Minneapolis. When a neighbor excitedly pointed out a Blackburnian Warbler, she became hooked on bird watching. Snetsinger began creating her own"life list," an inventory of all species seen and identified. She joined local birding groups, which kindled her protective love of nature. Upon her father's death in 1971, she inherited a large amount of money; it fortified her family and allowed Snetsinger to invest in farmland and travel worldwide to pursue her passion. As her children grew older, and she and her husband grew apart, she spent more time on journeys to such bird-rich locations as Mexico, Indonesia, Ecuador and Trinidad. Following a trip to Panama in 1981, Snetsinger, barely 50, received a crushing diagnosis of terminal melanoma. Believing that she had less than a year to live only accelerated her globetrotting pursuit of as-yet-unseen bird species and her obsession with expanding her unrivaled life list. Gentile details Snetsinger's increasing recklessness as she experienced years of miraculous remissions from cancer. Her hunt took on"a compulsive, even desperate, tinge" that sacrificed personal health and safety right up to her 1999 death in a driving accident while birding in Madagascar. The book's chronology is a bit choppy, but the prose delightfully conveys Gentile's engagement with her subject.

Compassionate and comprehensive.

(COPYRIGHT (2009) KIRKUS REVIEWS/NIELSEN BUSINESS MEDIA, INC. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.)

January 15, 2009
Amateur birder Phoebe Snetsinger reached the pinnacle of ornithological achievement by seeing more birds in the world than anyone else. Reporter Gentile's biography describes Phoebe as a frustrated stay-at-home wife and mother during the 1950s and 1960s who began birding to escape the boredom of suburban life. When she was diagnosed with terminal cancer at age 49, she decided to travel the world in search of birds while her health allowed. Each trip became a short-term goal for Phoebe and let her focus on birds instead of the cancer. She did this for 18 years, traveling between two and ten months a year, despite two cancer recurrences, injuries, assaults, kidnapping, and other difficulties. Phoebe eventually amassed a life list of 8,674 species, or 85 percent of living birds then known. Gentile's tale becomes engrossing when she describes Phoebe's self-imposed competition to achieve her life list, but the author's armchair psychology regarding Phoebe's inner thoughts and feelings impedes the storytelling. Information on the dangers and disasters befalling other birders is important but poorly integrated into the story. A separate glossary of birding terms for nonbirding readers would have been welcome. For larger natural history collections where birding is popular.Sally Bickley, Del Mar Coll., Corpus Christi, TX

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