Rating: 
Summary: A different kind of walk on the wild side!
Review: Anne Matthews has a keen wit & eye for the absurd & a strange rollicking turn of phrase that keeps you loping along, even as you gasp for a second wind.Consider the horseshoe crab in the sandy coastal waters off New York, Delaware Bay & the Yucatan. their mad annihilation will grip your heart. An unusual book with a unique perspective of our roaring cities with much to think about, much to chortle over & much, much about which to be regretful. The author writes much of history, urban & rural, architecture & locations, plagues & sewage, city limits & elastic boundaries. She quotes Darwin & Whitman, mayors & statisticians & the quiet, unassuming rescuers of the lost, beaten & bruised city wildlife. Consider the billions of migrating birds that rush over North America twice a year, seeking breeding grounds & winter homes ... you can stand on Wall Street in the wee hours & listen to the migrants calling, faint & high, as they stream above the sleeping city. Very, very well done - you should give yourself a treat & buy this one for your city nights will never be the same after you've spent a few hours with Anne Matthews on her walkabouts during her Wild Nights.
Rating: 
Summary: New York Nature Deja Vu
Review: As an avid reader of books focusing on the political, cultural and environmental life of New York City, I was excited at the prospect of purchasing "Wild Nights." However, upon taking a brief read of the book, I got the distinct impression that I'd read it before! And as a matter of fact, I had four years ago: "Wild New York" by Margaret Mittlebach and Michael Crewdson. And just judging by a cursory reading of Ms. Matthew's book, I would imagine she's read it as well. Now, to be sure, I am not accusing her of plagarism. However, I do feel that her book is a rather artless, plodding retread of ground covered in Ms. Mittlebach's and Mr. Crewdson's lively and engaging exploration of the city's geographic history. Not to say that Ms. Matthew's book isn't comprehensive, it just isn't necessary.
Rating: 
Summary: The Creatures you didn't know
Review: From coast to coast with most of the concentration in New York, Anne takes us on a journey into the lives and habits of a more knowledgeable and sophisticated animal world within our cites. Just like humans, the urban animal in a lot of cases, has adapted to the helter-skelter urban enviornment; and in some cases better than humans have. A wonderful read in language most of us can understand, this book flows from man's early mistakes to the animal's amazing solutions. The next time we look out of the bus or elevated train window on our way to work, and see that Sparrow or crow fighting the family pet for the dog food, we'll know what an alternate food source means. Highly recommended.
Rating:
Summary: Eye-opening and delightful
Review: I found this book to be a wonderful introduction to an important issue--the inexorable return of nature to our comfortable and often clueless urbanized/suburbanized lives. Matthews uses New York as an example, and does so in ways that charm and alarm. Her accounts of towerkill on Wall Street, peregrine life in midtown, horseshoe crabs in Brooklyn, the uptown Feast of Saint Francis, the environmental history of New York City, and the quest to reclaim Penn Station from the Jersey swamps are particularly well-done. But I found the book as a whole both perceptive and fair, as well as being extremely well-written: for instance, she offers a number of predictions about city futures, but makes it clear that the actual future will almost certainly surprise us--and in perhaps unpleasant ways. "Wild Nights" manages to delight and instruct, but never preaches or gets self-righteous, simply lays out the current arguments and invites you to make up your own mind. Once you finish "Wild Nights" (IF you read it carefully, and with an open heart and mind) you will never look at a city, any city, the same way again. The author's funny, angry vision of what we have done to ourselves made me think of "Silent Spring"--another book that made a great many people with cherished agendas and preconceptions intensely angry and defensive, but proved, in the end, all too accurate.
Rating:
Summary: Wow!
Review: I was engrossed with the facts and thrilled by the many directions of the witty style of Anne Matthews and found "Wild Nights" thoroughly entertaining and very informative. And, having lived in "Gotham", I can attest to the accuracy of much of the content. It's thought provoking how much is missed when we don't remember to reflect on the sequence of events. Anne Matthews has captured a linear progression of history, natural and other, and displayed it interestingly. One star omitted due to the last chapter's jaunt to Armageddon.
Rating: 
Summary: Where Are the Attributions
Review: I would like to echo other readers' sense that they've read it before, and from sources not given credit by Ms. Matthews. And as an activist in New York City intimately involved in the issues that Matthews explores, I question the soundness of her facts. For instance, her account of the cricket action at a NYC land auction was really off. Sort of fun, but I think there are other more useful and trustworthy sources for the same ideas.
Rating:
Summary: Intiguing concept
Review: Most Americans would agree that New York City is probably our most urbanized area in the country. Millions live and or work on four relatively small islands and a peninsular. Tenements and skyscrapers are the norm. Cement is everywhere and the underground gives off heat to melt snow rather quickly. Anne Matthews paints another landscape of the Big Apple. She insists nature is fighting back and beginning to reclaim the environment through wild animals and plants adapting to life in a cement jungle. WILD NIGHTS is an interesting look at civilization past and present, especially that of metropolitan New York. Though entertaining, the book provides a final forecast of doom that takes away from a powerful, well-written, and documented tome. Still, Many urbanites and suburbanites will wonder how close the front is to their homes and jobs. Harriet Klausner
Rating:
Summary: If you care about the world your children inherit...
Review: People who may dislike this book, but should read it anyway: Real-estate developers. Self-satisfied urbanites, suburbanites, and exurbanites. Anyone who doesn't believe in global warming. Anyone who thinks nature is boring--or predictable. People who will truly enjoy "Wild Nights": Anyone who appreciates literate, deft nonfiction. Anyone who loves nature--yet knows that nature may not necessarily love us. Anyone interested in seeing the world's greatest city through a new lens. Anyone fascinated by how the past and the present intertwine. Anyone who worries about what kind of world we may be leaving our children and grandchildren.
Rating:
Summary: Literary Journalism of a very high order
Review: Reader Kaplan is much mistaken. "Wild Nights" is not a tour book, not a field guide, but literary journalism of a very high order: original, scrupulous, informed, and moving, a skillful blend of environmental history, public policy, natural observation, and poetry. Anne Matthews' surface topic is the increasing presence of nature in greater New York and other cities, but her subtext, always, is the future of urban civilization. "Wild Nights" is a brilliant complement to her two previous books, "Where the Buffalo Roam" and "Bright College Years," both also studies of American places undergoing rapid yet largely misunderstood change. I read Matthews with enormous pleasure, assign her books to my students, and put her on the same pedestal as John McPhee, Joan Didion, Tom Wolfe, Annie Dillard, and other great contemporary nonfiction writers.
Rating:
Summary: Literary Journalism of a very high order
Review: Reader Kaplan is much mistaken. "Wild Nights" is not a tour book, not a field guide, but literary journalism of a very high order: original, scrupulous, informed, and moving, a skillful blend of environmental history, public policy, natural observation, and poetry. Anne Matthews' surface topic is the increasing presence of nature in greater New York and other cities, but her subtext, always, is the future of urban civilization. "Wild Nights" is a brilliant complement to her two previous books, "Where the Buffalo Roam" and "Bright College Years," both also studies of American places undergoing rapid yet largely misunderstood change. I read Matthews with enormous pleasure, assign her books to my students, and put her on the same pedestal as John McPhee, Joan Didion, Tom Wolfe, Annie Dillard, and other great contemporary nonfiction writers.
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