Although it was still too dark to see well, Joe absentmindedly
thrust his right hand into the sack to extract the specimen and
have a look. Immediately, he winced with pain and yanked out his
hand. A tiny black-and-white banded snake, less than ten inches
long, was dangling limply from his middle finger, its fangs still
sunk into his flesh.
In the fall of 2001, deep in the jungle of Burma, a team of
scientists is searching for rare snakes. They are led by Dr. Joe
Slowinski, at forty already one of the most brilliant biologists of
our time. It is the most ambitious scientific expedition ever
mounted into this remote region, venturing into the foothills of
the Himalayas. The bold undertaking is brought to a dramatic halt
by the bite of the many-banded krait, the deadliest serpent in
Asia. In the moment he pulled his hand from the specimen bag and
saw the krait, Joe knew that his life was in grave and imminent
peril. Thus began one of the most remarkable wilderness rescue
attempts of modern times, as Joe's teammates kept him alive for
thirty hours by mouth-to-mouth respiration, waiting for a rescue
that never came.
A daredevil obsessed with venomous snakes since his youth,
Slowinski was a modern-day adventurer who rose quickly to the top
of his field, discovering many previously unidentified snake
species in his brief yet exhilarating career. The Snake Charmer is
at once brilliant biography and exotic travel literature, blended
with an accessible introduction to the bizarre, fascinating-and
sometimes controversial-world of snake science. The narrative
transports the reader into primeval wilderness, from the Everglades
to Peru to Burma, in search of rattlesnakes and boa constrictors,
kraits and cobras.
Joe Slowinski's career was fast and exciting, his tragic final
expedition a pulse-pounding struggle between man and nature. In The
Snake Charmer, renowned journalist and author Jamie James captures
the life and death of this charismatic, endlessly fascinating man.
Exhaustively researched in interviews with Slowinski's colleagues
and family, and the author's own trek into the wilds of Burma, this
is narrative nonfiction in the tradition of Into the Wild and The
Perfect Storm.
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