Andrew Blechman

An award-winning journalist, Blechman has been a reporter for the Los Angeles Times and the Des Moines Register. His work has also appeared in Smithsonian Magazine, the New York Times, and the International Herald Tribune, among others. His first book, Pigeons: The Fascinating Saga of the World's Most Revered and Reviled Bird, was widely praised in the media and featured on CBS Sunday Morning. Pigeons, which is now available in paperback, was recently released in Australia and New Zealand. Blechman currently divides his time between New England and Germany with his wife and daughter.

Leisureville: Adventures in a World Without Children By Andrew D. Blechman Cover Image
$16.00
ISBN: 9780802144188
Availability: NOT ON HAND, but usually Ships in 2-7 Days
Published: Grove Press - July 8th, 2009

Blechman delves into life in a gated retirement community and offers a hilarious, first-hand report on all its peculiarities. He also takes a serious look at the consequences of such instant cities and examines the implications of millions of Americans dropping out of society


Pigeons: The Fascinating Saga of the World's Most Revered and Reviled Bird By Andrew D. Blechman Cover Image
$16.00
UNAVAILABLE-Possible Reasons: Backordered, Out-of-Stock, or Out-of-Print (But email us to search for a copy.)
ISBN: 9780802143280
Published: Grove Press - October 10th, 2007

Pigeons are athletes of the highest caliber. While racehorses receive all the glory with their 35 mph sprints around a one-mile racetrack, homing pigeons--a mere pound of flesh and feathers--routinely fly more than five hundred miles in a single day at speeds exceeding 60 mph, finding their way home from a place they've never been before, without stopping. Pigeon racing is an internationally popular sport that can count the Queen of England among its enthusiasts. Winning birds can bring home millions of dollars in prize money and fetch tens of thousands of dollars at auction. Although we all share a universal bond with this ubiquitous bird, there are some of us whose lives revolve around the bird in more profound--and often humorous--ways. I met trainers who ran around their backyards with whistles in tow, barking orders at their racing pigeons as if conditioning a team of professional soccer players; militant members of a New York City pigeon-underground, who prowl city streets in search of pigeon poachers; and backyard geneticists who toyed with the cellular composition of pigeons in their quest to create a bird more akin to a Dresden figurine than a child of nature.