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  Saxs book roams divertingly over the scientific and cultural history of the corvid family, which includes the carrion crow, the raven, the rook and the jackdaw, tracing ambivalent responses to the mischievous birds.

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  The Guardian

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  A fascinating and delightful book . . . examines the crow in myth, literature and life . . . With sections on the crow in ancient civilisations, different parts of the world and through to modern times, this book would be an excellent read for anyone interested in this group of birds.

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  British Trust for Ornithology

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  In this vivid and enjoyable meditation on crows in art, literature and history, Sax gives the genus Corvus the enthusiastic treatment it deserves.

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  Publishers Weekly

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  Crow is the sort of monograph I treasure and seek out, a work that draws together around atotem animal centuries of relevant lore, a richness of iconographic treatments (photographs, portraits, masks, natural history plates, cartoons, book plates, marginalia, etc.) and the best natural history and natural science available to a lay researcher and engaged author.

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  H-NILAS Reviews

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  I found the section on the history of the scarecrow especially moving. Sax skillfully conveys the shifting use of these objects, which were first developed to serve a real purpose, scaring corvid crop predators, and slowly devolved into something less applied and more nostalgic. For me, this section, especially, captured the ambiguous relationship between humans and crows that is repeated throughout the book…

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  Anthrozoos

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  Boria Sax has assembled a glorious romp of a book about the Crow family, and our human responses to it…. I couldnt put this book down.

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  Sacred Hoop

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  In Crow, Sax elucidates the nuanced and sometimes illogical or contradictory cultural resonances of these birds. Crows are usually black, so have frequently been associated with mystical powers: their darkness. their slouching posture, and their love of carrion, have helped to make crows symbols of death, yet few if any other birds are so lively and playful. …there are many careful, evocatively observational passages.

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  Parallax

Introduction
1. Mesopotamia
2. Egypt, Greece and Rome
3. The European Middle Ages and Renaissance
4. Asia
5. Native American Culture
6. The Romantic Era
7. Lord of the Crows
8. The Twentieth Century and Beyond
Timeline
References
Bibliography
Websites
Associations
Acknowledgements
Photo Acknowledgements
Index

Boria Sax teaches at Sing Sing prison and online in the graduate literature programme at Mercy University. He has published many books, which have won awards and been translated into numerous languages. His most recent is Avian Illuminations: A Cultural History of Birds (Reaktion, 2021).