"Now as never before, exotic animals and plants are crossing the globe, borne on the swelling tide of human traffic to places where nature never intended them to be. Bird-eating snakes hitchhike to Hawaii in the landing gear of airliners; pernicious European zebra mussels, riding in ships' ballast water, disrupt aquatic ecosystems across the United States; feral camels plague Australia, as do poisonous foreign toads; giant Indonesian pythons lurk beneath homes in suburban Miami. As alien species jump from place to place and increasingly crowd native and endangered species out of existence, biologists speak fearfully of "the homogenization of the world." The fastest-growing threat to biological diversity, they contend, may be nature itself." "Out of Eden is a personal journey through this strange and shifting landscape. Alan Burdick routs the front lines of ecological invasion: in Hawaii, Tasmania, Guam, San Francisco; in lush rain forests, through underground lava tubes, aboard an Alaska-bound oil tanker, inside a spacecraft-assembly facility at NASA. He follows world-class scientists - invasion biologists, "mix-o-ecologist"--And a global cast of alien species to ask: What exactly is nature? What in natural?"--Jacket.