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In 1872 the bald eagle was chosen as the United States’ national symbol. Since then, this emblem of liberty, grace and strength has graced everything from dollar bills and police badges to pop groups. Yet sadly, few Americans have ever laid eyes on a wild specimen. In Eagle’s Plume (Charles Scribner, $21, ISBN 0 684 19717 0), Bruce Beans sets the species’ decline and the subsequent fight to save the bird against a background of wider environmental issues, particularly the DDT crisis in the 1970s. At the head of a food chain, raptors were severely affected by this pesticide accumulating in their body fats. As a result, they laid such fragile eggs that the shells collapsed before the chicks hatched. A touching ensemble of folklore, poetry, myth and personal reminiscence.