Over the last half century, Peter Matthiessen has enriched American literature with a series of influential, highly regarded novels, many set in out-of-the-way places. Along with these novels, Matthiessen has written 16 books of nonfiction that explore issues in the conservation of animal species and human cultures--books such as Wildlife in America, an early contribution to the literature of environmental awareness, and In the Spirit of Crazy Horse, a defense of American Indian activism.

McKay Jenkins, a literary scholar and outdoors writer, chose widely among Matthiessen's nonfiction work for this anthology, which includes excerpts from well-known (The Snow Leopard) and forgotten (Sal Si Puedes) books alike. Jenkins's careful selections highlight Matthiessen's many strengths as a lyrical interpreter of nature who has joined a poetic appreciation for nature to a hard-edged, fact-based style of reportage. The reader of this book will visit episodes of life and death in highland New Guinea and arid South Dakota, learn about the astounding migration patterns of Eskimo curlews and the feeding habits of great white sharks, and be transported to mountain summits and jungle rivers. Those armchair journeys come thanks to an extraordinary writer whose work, Jenkins writes, "is marked above all by an unblinking gaze at the world's subtle beauty, and at its fragility when set against humankind's blundering self-interest." --Gregory McNamee