2014 read #36: The Natural History of Unicorns by Chris Lavers.

The Natural History of Unicorns by Chris Lavers
246 pages
Published 2009
Read from April 18 to April 19
Rating: ★★★ out of 5

This is a slight but pleasant excursion into classical natural history, attempting to pin down the identity of -- or at least the collective inspiration for -- millennia of unicorn myths in Greek, Muslim, and Western folklore. Lavers tends to overreach himself in an attempt to pull together every possible candidate, at one point listing every species from narwhal to walrus to fossil wooly mammoth and wooly rhino to hornbill as sources for the "khutu" branch of unicorn folklore, and even surmises a heretofore unknown relict population of Asian musk oxen, before squeezing into deep mythology to pull up every instance of a city woman used to lure a wild man out of the forests. Still, The Natural History of Unicorns was a cute little book and an easy read.