The Ascent of Birds by John Reilly

This is a book for the intelligent and inquisitive birder who wants to know the science– but also for students of evolutionary biology and all those who have wondered at how we have ended up, in any part of the world, with the mix of species we see today. It is written by an intelligent and inquisitive birder who understands the science, so it all works out! It is a book about the evolutionary origins of, and relationships between, different groups of birds and about biogeography. The level of detail is astounding, and while several reviews describe it as beautifully written, I would characterize it as comprehensive in scope and that the break down of highly detailed information about exactly how bird families happened evolutionarily speaking is astounding but understandable in this account. There is the very occasional instance of going rogue (most notably when he calls David Sibley egotistical)--but he largely sticks to the pattern, whereby he walks the reader through what was known and written about birds from an early time, far earlier than Darwin, and then what we now know from DNA about birds.